Jun
22
Be proud - Mars Drinks production waste sent to landfill = zero
Posted at 10:05 in Customer News : Sustainability
Landfill sites across the UK bulk up every day with workplace and household waste, but Mars Drinks is proud to announce it’s not coming from our factories.
We manufactured 3,700 drinks vending machines and 884 million drinks last year in the UK alone and are dedicated to working hard on our sustainable business practices.
We can now announce that we’ve reduced our waste being sent to landfill from 600 tons per year to zero, a massive achievement for our drinks factories. Over the last three years, as part of our overall ‘Thirsty for Change’ programme to reduce our impact on the environment, as well as helping you to meet your own sustainability goals, we’ve committed to reducing our manufacturing waste. By reviewing each stage of the process, we have been looking for alternative ways to either re-use or recycle materials.
Peter Ramsay, our environmental manager, has been leading the zero to landfill initiative in the factories. Here he describes some of the ways in which we deal with the by-products of our production processes: “Looking at each step of the manufacturing process, we’ve been able to find ways of either reusing or recycling materials – from the refurbishment of the machines, baling our cardboard for re-sale, through to processing any drinks powder split during the manufacturing for use in high grade animal feed preparation.” Peter continues: “We also send our waste to a third party specialist where it is burnt to create electrical power which is then sent back into the national grid for future use.” Using this Waste2Energy process, Mars Drinks is effectively saving enough electricity to power at least 30 homes. We now live in a world where the energy used to heat our water and brew our cup of coffee is having a higher environmental impact than the transportation, roasting and packaging of the beans. With this in mind, we have to keep abreast of the latest sustainable policies and processes and work to achieve high energy efficiency.
With our FLAVIA drinks machines 52% more energy efficient than competitor machines during a typical day of use and our KLIX OUTLOOK drinks vending machines using 12.5% less energy to make hot drinks than key competitors, we have reached an incredible milestone in our sustainable achievements. However, there is always more that can be done and we look forward to working with you to reach those environmental goals.
