Packaging is an essential part of our products and performs several functions, for example, protecting the product on its journey from the brewery to the customer, marketing the brand and providing information to our consumers. Our choice of materials is influenced by many factors including the move some retailers are making towards shelf-ready packaging to reduce handling costs. Too much packaging means unnecessary use of materials, higher carbon emissions and extra cost. Our efforts in this area focus on reducing material use through lightweighting, reusing containers where possible and increasing recycled content.
Lightweighting
As a first step, we seek to use less packaging material. This has obvious benefits in terms of the raw materials and energy we consume and the financial savings we can make. As part of GlassRite, (an initiative from the UK Government backed Waste and Resources Action Programme), we recently redesigned the European bottle for Miller Genuine Draft, one of our international brands, introducing a new-look, 330ml bottle. This has saved more than 1,000 tonnes of glass and reduced our carbon dioxide emissions by around 650 tonnes per year.
Work by Miller in the USA also shows how small differences can result in big savings.
By reducing the diameter of the ends of its cans from 2.125 to 2.063 inches, Miller has saved over 560 tonnes of aluminium per year, equivalent to the aluminium contained in 2.2 million cases of beer. In a parallel exercise, a redesign of bottles has reduced the amount of glass used by more than 17,000 tonnes. Plastic bottles have also been redesigned to use less resin. Thanks to these combined measures, Miller has lightened shipping loads by 446 truckloads of beer, saving nearly 95,000 litres of fuel and 250 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.
High levels of reuse
In many of our markets, a significant amount of our product is delivered in reusable glass bottles that can be used for as many as 40 round trips. Numerous studies have been carried out into the relative benefits of reusable versus one-way packaging. Results vary, but in a number of our markets we consider reuse to be an environmentally preferable option although it does to a large extent depend on the assistance of retailers and consumers. Reuse reduces the amount of material requiring disposal, preserves raw materials and saves the energy used in the manufacture and transport of virgin bottles or cans.
In El Salvador, La Constancia has introduced a new campaign under the slogan of ‘La Retornable’ aimed at protecting the environment. Through this initiative, the company is encouraging customers to recycle glass bottles by returning them to the company in exchange for cash or other products.
In some countries we use plastic sleeves to prevent damage to our bottles and maximise the number of return trips they take. We have been trialling a biodegradable plastic for shrink wrapping our products in Hungary and Poland. This has so far been successful and we are now testing it in the very different climatic conditions of South Africa.
Recycling
There are technical limits to how far we can lightweight our packaging and reuse is not always appropriate for the market. In these circumstances, it is particularly important that we seek to maximise the recycled content of our containers. In many parts of the world most waste ends up in landfill sites and litter can also be a real nuisance, particularly in developing countries. We are working to facilitate the recycling of our waste, provide an end-market for recycled material and encourage appropriate disposal.
In Honduras, we are working with local authorities, national government, local communities and volunteers to collect and recycle packaging waste. This started in 1994 with recycling cans and has been expanding ever since, most recently to include PET plastic, most visibly in the Bay Islands. These efforts are particularly important as the islands are located on the world’s second largest coral reef.
As part of its corporate social investment programme, Cervecería Nacional in Panama has been working with an environmental NGO, the Foundation for Social Action, to preserve a public landmark and recreational park in Panama City. Employees have cleaned up Parque Omar and introduced recycling stations to reduce litter and encourage recycling.
The business held a recycling fair which received great public support and wide press coverage and also held workshops on recycling practices for workers at its plant. It is hoped that this example will be followed in other parts of the country.
New product development
Our SmartGate product development process is a good example of how our sustainable development priorities are being integrated into mainstream business processes. SmartGate requires any new product to pass through a series of gates or go/no-go decisions at each stage of its development. The system incorporates a check-list to ensure that any new packaging material or upgrade, maintains or improves the product’s environmental credentials. SmartGate has so far been rolled out across SAB Ltd, Miller and some of our European operations and during 2008/09 it is intended to extend it to the rest of the business.
We are also in the process of establishing global standards for all our packaging materials to ensure consistent quality and environmental credentials across all our operations. Using recently introduced collaboration software on the group intranet, we are involving representatives from all of our businesses to ensure that local circumstances are taken into account. We now have global standards for glass and PET bottles and for the plastic crates used by local and central procurement teams.