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6. Environment Managing Our Impacts Since 1992 when Ben & Jerry’s signed the CERES principles, we have honored a commitment to support safe and sustainable In 2001, we have been pursuing programs that promote sustainable agriculture practices among dairy farmers. The Dairy Stewardship Alliance in Vermont and Caring Dairy in the Netherlands are collaborative initiatives that help farmers as they pursue leading-edge practices. As to the impact of our business on the environment, we’re active in a number of areas. We have continued to evaluate and develop the most environmentally progressive packaging available. In 2007 we continued our commitment to reduce our climate impacts around the world by pursuing increased energy efficiency in our supply chain, manufacturing plants, refrigeration systems, and product distribution systems. We continue to purchase carbon offsets as a part of our overall strategy to manage our climate impacts. We also calculated our Global Warming Social Footprint in the US and our Climate Hoofprint in the EU to help us measure whether we’re doing enough to respond to climate change. Our Environmental Management System commits our manufacturing plants to establishing goals for measuring and reducing their environmental impacts. These areas include energy use and emissions, water use and wastewater management, solid waste and recycling, hazardous waste and high strength dairy waste. The plants establish annual reduction targets, maintain strict adherence to environmental regulations and complete environmental projects sponsored by our company Green Teams for both internal and community-based awareness and education. Over the years, Ben & Jerry’s has developed and implemented various environmental initiatives. See our timeline to get the complete history of our program. |
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food production and minimize our negative impact on the environment. It’s important for us to continually integrate programs and practices that assure our product and operations stay consistent with our stated agricultural and environmental values.