ANNUAL REPORT 2012
QUARTZ+CO
CARLSBERG GROUP CASE
SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING BY MORTEN SAITTA BREGENDAL In addition to environmental benefits, more sustainable packaging is expected to generate cost savings
B
rewers and FMCG companies are under pressure from regulators, retailers and consumers to reduce the environmental impact of their operations.
45% 45% OF CARLSBERG’S CO2 EMISSIONS CAN BE ATTRIBUTED TO PACKAGING
At the end of 2012, Carlsberg defined a bold CSR ambition: to position itself as a frontrunner in the brewery industry within sustainable packaging, and to do it fast. Consequently, the Executive Committee in Carlsberg asked the CSR department to prepare the company to move fast to secure a leadership position. Packaging is an important feature of Carlsberg’s products. It’s an essential part of marketing, affecting how customers and consumers perceive the brand and products. But other aspects are of increasing concern to Carlsberg, such as the great potential of reducing the company's carbon footprint as well as optimising manufacturing, procurement and logistics costs by working systematically with sustainable packaging.
PERSPECTIVE CSR AS A STRATEGIC DRIVER A few years ago, CSR was often seen as a parenthetic business area rather than a commercial driver. Today, CSR is no longer a satellite activity hovering in the outer
Driven by Group CSR, Carlsberg decided to implement a new sustainable packaging programme to quickly establish a leadership position while also ensuring bottom line value creation and exploiting the PR and branding potential. The sustainable packaging programme builds on four pillars: reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink. In the following, two of these four principles are elaborated.
“To us, SUSTAINABILITY, or CSR, is business, it's NOT something that's DETACHED”
Reduce: Lightweighting
It was decided first to turn the spotlights towards lightweightSimon Hoffmeyer Boas, Senior CSR Manager ing. Today, a glass bottle weighs 20% less than it did 20 years ago, but there’s a potential to reduce weight even more. “Lighter products mean that less energy goes into manufacturing and transport. It’s good for the environment, but it also reduces the cost of procuring the bottle”, says Simon Hoffmeyer Boas, Senior CSR Manager in Carlsberg. “To us, sustainability, or CSR, is business, it’s not something that's detached”.
sphere of a business. The question is no longer whether a company has a CSR programme, but rather what kind of CSR programme it has and how this contributes to the overall value creation. In many businesses, the answer is still a somewhat fragmented list. Only few take the full plunge and let CSR drive vast changes throughout their supply chains. But the tables are turning. The benefits from using CSR as a driver
to fundamentally change the entire value chain can be many, and substantial financial gains can often be made. The positive impact on the environment or society, apart from being a benefit in its own right, holds great PR value. Furthermore, the company forms a strong ethical relationship to employees and the community in which it does business, thereby gaining licence to operate.
Rethink: Closing the material loop
Large-scale CSR initiatives often involve partnerships between businesses, governments and NGOs. Products made by environmentally safe and recyclable materials can be awarded the Cradle-toCradle® Certificate, however, this requires co-operation between the various stakeholders in the value chain. COMPANY FACTS In 2013, Carlsberg will commence a proj- Fourth largest brewer ect focused on generating positive impact in the world. by developing Cradle-to-Cradle® products. This will ensure that the materials 76 majority-owned breweries in Western used in beer cans can be used again – per- Europe, Eastern Europe haps in another beer can, or even in your and Asia. next iPad or bike ... 9% organic beer volume growth in Asia.
Accelerated transformation
Packaging is a complex domain in Carlsberg, involving a wide range of stake-
41,708 employed in 2012.
GROUP LEVEL
Creating transparency
Establishing baseline tools and governance
COUNTRY LEVEL
Hypothesis generation and testing
Setting targets and driving initiatives
holders, not to mention tonnes of glass, carton and aluminium. To drive the high-speed transformation, Carlsberg set up a collateral process. At group levTHE CARLSBERG el, focus was to esGROUP REPORTS tablish the baseline, OPERATING PROFITS drive PR and estabOF DKK 9.8 BILLION IN 2012 lish partnerships. In this regard, a global database of the weight and CO2 reduction potential of various initiatives was developed. In parallel, local country level deep-dives were conducted to set local targets and to accelerate specific initiatives. “One of the things that made this project special was the parallel set-up, creating a productive process between the Group and the markets. Selected markets participated in generating and testing hypotheses as well as setting ambitious yet realistic targets. Here, a key tool was the global database which contains aggregated information about the weight and CO2 impact of Carlsberg’s global packaging portfolio for all SKUs”, says Simon Hoffmeyer Boas. “The database has enabled us to compare weight across all products and markets and identify best practices as well as the CO2 reduction potential of decreasing the weight of our packaging”.
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Learn more about Carlsberg Group's CSR activities at www.carlsberggroup.com/CSR/Reports
2013 PLANS Carlsberg is planning to roll out a range of activities to help markets reduce the environmental impact of packaging. 1. Identify weight reduction targets for primary packaging 2. Conduct a Cradle-to-Cradle® analysis to identify potential Cradle-to-Cradle® products 3. Create consumer engagement communication concerning recycling 4. Sustainable packaging idea catalogue developed and distributed internally