In a world of complex environmental sustainability challenges, the need for a collaborative approach has never been more critical. The issues facing food and beverage brands and manufacturers are multifaceted and interconnected, encompassing everything from raw materials sourcing and packaging choice to downstream shipping and logistics; attempts to tackle these problems alone are likely to face significant challenges.
Food and beverage brands should seek inspiration and innovation beyond their organization. By collaborating with like-minded equipment suppliers, supply chain partners, retailers, and even competitor brands, companies can set common goals, pool resources, and make a more significant impact than they could individually. A collaborative approach not only amplifies the potential progress but can also inspire and motivate everyone involved to innovate for a better future.
Design for sustainability
A key element for environmental sustainability in food and beverages is product development and design – from ensuring that raw materials are sourced responsibly to choosing product packaging that provides the right level of protection to prevent food waste while contributing to a circular economy.
As part of their journey, manufacturers may consider incorporating new, environmentally friendly, ethical, and alternative (e.g., plant-based) raw materials in product design and production. They may also look at improving a product’s energy efficiency to reduce cost and waste during production and designing product packaging for reuse and recycling.
Packaging material choice can present a significant challenge for brands – with multiple criteria to consider, including ease of recyclability, reuse, or compostability, overall packaging weight, and energy and water use. While a glass bottle may seem like the more ‘sustainable’ solution for beverages owing to the ease of recyclability, the overall increase in product weight compared to PET can easily lead to spike in carbon emissions from transport downstream if logistics still rely on carbon-based energy.
Of course, any changes to products need to be considered alongside the potential knock-on effects they might have – both in terms of ensuring that products can still be effectively managed on production lines, including product handling, packaging, or coding and marking, and in ensuring that changes don’t have a knock-on effect further downstream.
While speaking to competitor brands about potential design and development opportunities might seem counterintuitive from a business perspective, by working together, brands can pool resources, apply influence up and down the supply chain, and ensure any new projects complement other projects in the marketplace rather than working against one another.
Collaborating with production suppliers and other businesses from the wider supply chain is also essential. No one company owns more than a small piece of the challenge. As such, it’s easy for individual companies to propose changes, for example, to product packaging design, that may have unforeseen negative impacts if materials recycling facilities cannot adequately handle them. Collaborating with other trusted partners from within the broader supply chain can help to develop solutions while avoiding potential pitfalls.
Improve production performance
Food production is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, especially considering that a substantial proportion of edible food never makes it as far as the end consumer. The UK's Waste and Resource Action Programme estimates that 16% of all food waste occurs during the manufacturing process – with human error and production line inefficiencies, including manual product changeovers, emerging as some of the major drivers behind these losses.
When human error emerges during food and beverage production, the best-case scenario is incorrect products that will need to be repackaged – highly perishable items, such as dairy products, will inevitably end up as food waste.
Food and beverage manufacturers should collaborate closely with their machinery suppliers to identify areas where waste could be emerging, implement solutions to reduce errors, and ensure that energy, time, and funds are spent creating the maximum possible number of high-quality, sellable products. After all, the most environmentally sustainable process will also be the most efficient.
Automation, machine integration, and automatic vision-based quality control are not just buzzwords but key strategies for identifying and resolving issues linked to human error and manual processing, and by extension, reducing food waste and reducing costs.
Finally, manufacturers can optimize their processes by looking to implement solutions for real-time machine performance monitoring by working with machinery suppliers to implement sensors and cloud-based solutions, which can be customized to detect drops in efficiency, sending alerts that facilitate swift intervention before a line stops. Suppliers can also analyze data from connected machines to establish baselines for optimal performance.
Optimize supply chain chains
Environmentally responsible manufacturing doesn’t end with production. Supply chain optimization is another crucial metric on the path towards more sustainable manufacturing. To promote this, brands should seek to collaborate with upstream and downstream supply chain partners and set up systems to increase transparency and share more data.
During periods of high demand or when faced with stock shortages and delays, increased demand visibility can help manufacturers accurately forecast lead times, control stock requirements, and manage customer expectations.
Including variable product data, such as batch and product information, embedded within scannable 2D codes is one way of facilitating greater visibility within supply chains enabling better stock control and making sources of errors easier to trace.
Scannable 2D codes can facilitate data sharing throughout the supply chain, allowing brands and supply chain partners to track products, provide status updates, and report on lifecycle data for individual batches of products. This increased data flow can provide valuable insights into inefficiencies and areas prone to waste or leakage so brands can optimize their operations, improve resilience, and reduce the risk of food waste.
Data sharing will be critical for compliance with regulations like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), requiring manufacturers to track and report their full carbon footprint, including Scope 3 carbon emissions, further highlighting the important role of collaboration in meeting industry standards and developing environmentally sustainable solutions.
Collaboration: The Key to a Sustainable Future
The pathway to a more sustainable, environmentally responsible future for food and beverage production will require global cooperation across governments, industries, and supply chains.
For manufacturers, the ideal approach will involve collaboration with like-minded organizations and building partnerships with suppliers who can help implement sustainable practices at every stage of the production process.
This holistic approach will not only benefit the environment, but will also help brands to reduce costs, improves customer satisfaction, and enhance brand reputation.