Our three pillars of sustainability

A responsible business rooted in food and agriculture

Our business is founded in the world of food and agriculture, and our operating model depends upon sustainable agricultural and rural economies within the sugar supply chain.

ACCREDITATIONS

Sustainable agriculture is extremely important to us, our growers and our customers. Alongside our industry partners, we work hard across our supply chain to reduce our impact on the environment and sugar beet travels on average just 28 miles from the farm where it is grown to one of our factories. We are fully assured and achieve high standards on sustainability across our value chain with our growers.

All of our growers must ensure that their sugar beet crop is covered under the Red Tractor Farm Assurance (Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet Standard) Scheme Version 4.1 at all times. This is a condition of their contract with British Sugar, and we can only receive sugar beet at our factories from growers with valid Farm Assurance. Growers are audited yearly, and the audits are registered with Red Tractor as the standard holder, who in turn inform us of the grower’s status.

Additionally, as a Sedex member we are committed to sourcing responsibly and having an ethical and sustainable supply chain. Using Sedex tools and services helps us improve our responsible business practices.

OUR THREE PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY

For British Sugar, sustainability is economic, social and environmental. These three pillars set out the areas where our knowledge and resources are enabling us to make a positive change.

They represent the issues that matter most to us, to our stakeholders and to the communities where we operate. Together, these three pillars give structure, direction and unity to all our sustainability efforts.

We are focusing on playing our part in meeting our 2030 sustainability commitments, through reducing our end-to-end supply chain water and CO2 footprints by 30%, ensuring all our plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, biodegradable or compostable and providing access to objective scientific advice on sugar, the diet and health to over 25 million people around the world.