Go to this month’s Tracker on page 40 for a full list of companies that have recently issued sustainability reports


A new anaerobic digestion plant built by the Suffolk brewer Adnams will benefit the company – and the community too


Suffolk brewer Adnams has just built an anaer- obic digestion (AD) plant, which is the first in the UK to use brewery and local food waste to produce renewable gas.


In partnership with British Gas and the National Grid, the facility has started injecting renewable gas into the grid, generating up to 4.8M kilowatt hours a year – enough to heat 235 family homes for a year. And in the future, the new plant will produce enough renewable gas to power the Adnams brewery and run its fleet of lorries, while still leaving around 60% of the output to be sold back to the grid. By using waste from the brewery and food waste collected locally to generate biomethane, the plant will prevent the release of methane to the atmosphere, while diverting rubbish from landfill.


The Adnams Bio Energy plant consists of three digesters – sealed vessels in which natural- ly-occurring bacteria act without oxygen to break down up to 12,500 tonnes of organic waste a year. The result is the production of bio- methane as well as a liquid organic fertiliser. The plant will also be fitted with solar ther- mal panels too, creating a mini energy park. The deal, with British Gas parent company Centrica, will ensure that all of the site, includ- ing the company’s beer and wine distribution centre, will be using renewably-sourced energy that is generated on-site, with some surplus energy available for export. This is another groundbreaking feature for the facility. Cash from RBS and grants from the European Regional Development Fund, East of England Development Agency and the Department of Energy and Climate Change have provided vital in getting the facility built on the site of the impressively-constructed distribution centre Site.


Cambridge-based Bio Group, which Adnams has partnered, specialises in designing and building renewable energy processing plants across the UK. The Adnams facility uses groundbreaking technology and is the first stage of a national roll out of AD plants for the com- pany. “We use innovative, low-carbon building techniques to produce energy through a com- pletely organic and natural process,” said Steve


InterfaceFLOR hopes to further improve its already impressive environmental credentials with full product transparency


The Adnams Bio Energy Plant will, in the future, produce enough renewable gas to power the brewery and run its fleet of lorries


Sharratt, the firm’s group chief executive. “Nothing is wasted.” Adnams’ boss Andy Wood is delighted with the new facility. “For a number of years now, we have been investing in ways to reduce our impact on the environment,” he said. “The real- ity of being able to convert our own brewing waste and local food waste to power Adnams’ brewery and vehicles, as well as the wider com- munity is very exciting.


The industrial ecology cycle will be complete when the fertiliser produced from the AD process can be used on farmland to grow barley for Adnams beer.


This plant will have a major impact on CO2 reduction in the region, as well as the generation


of renewable energy. The food waste would otherwise be destined for landfill, but process- ing it through the digester will save an estimat-


ed 50,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalents from land- fill. “This project demonstrates how local com- munities can help us move to a low carbon ener- gy future,” said Gearóid Lane, managing direc- tor of new energy at British Gas. “Using waste that would otherwise end up in landfill to pro- duce renewable gas is mutually beneficial for the environment and homes and businesses.” Adnams has been brewing from its base at Southwold in Suffolk for more than 100 years and produces a range of cask and bottled beers. adnams.co.uk


InterfaceFLOR is going for full product trans- parency for its range of carpet tiles, having developed a European environmental product declaration (EPD). The independently-validat- ed EPD discloses an unprecedented level of detail about the lifecycle impacts of the compa- ny’s carpet tile. And the company hopes that it will transform the way in which building mate- rials are bought, sold and marketed. Customers in the building and architecture industry are being “misled by a wave of partial and selective claims about green credentials” says InterfaceFLOR – and there is a need for higher marketing standards where claims are based on life-cycle assessments (LCA) of prod- ucts. The manufacturer has used LCA to meas- ure and reduce the environmental impact of its products and processes for many years, and car- ries out an LCA on all its carpet tile products. But the newly developed EPD will go even


further. It will make LCA information, which is European industry stan- dard and third-party vali- dated, available to the public. The target is for the business to have EPDs available for its entire product range by the end of 2012. “The EPD is more than a green label, revealing all the ‘ingredi- ents’ of a product, where they come from, and the environmental impacts throughout its lifecycle,” says Ramon Arratia, sus-


The new EPD will disclose an unprecedented amount of detail


tainability director for Europe. This includes everything from energy and material consump- tion to waste generation and emissions. “Most of the focus in sustainability reports is on the company’s own operations, but most of the impacts aren’t captured because they are in other parts of the product lifecycle,” adds Arratia. “The power of full product transparen- cy is to create competition on real product sus- tainability performance, rather than the current false battle for the greenest communications.” interfaceflor.co.uk


Sustainable Business | August/September 2010 | 19


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44