ConAgra’s scope 3 emissions fell 1.1 percent year-on-year, from 552,562 metric tons in FY 2011 to 546,655 in FY 2012, the report shows.
The company surpassed its 2015 waste goal of diverting 75 percent of its solid waste from landfill. In FY 2011 the company improved the diversion rate to 91.1 percent and decreased the amount of waste it produces per pound of food it creates, from 0.125 pounds in FY 2011 to 0.120 pounds in FY 2012. The company’s total waste generation dropped almost 4 percent year-on-year, from 1,218,194 tons in FY 2011 to 1,171,631 tons in FY 2012.
Unwanted ConAgra food is donated to feed people, used as animal feed, used to generate energy or applied to land as a soil amendment.
In FY 2012 an employee at a David Seeds facility sourced an outside vendor who could reuse unsaleable roasted seeds and packaging film, the facility’s two largest landfill streams. The success in diverting these two material streams increased the David Seeds facility’s landfill diversion rate from 22 percent in FY 2011 to 84 percent in FY 2012 and prevented more than 400 tons of materials from being sent to the landfill, the report says.
In September, ConAgra announced that by 2017 it expects all of its suppliers to produce action plans aimed at eliminating gestation crates for sows. Such cages measure about two feet by seven feet – too small for the sows to turn around. The company said the phase-out could take “up to 10 years.”
In April, the company announced that entries to its internal 2012 Sustainable Development Awards collectively reduced carbon emissions by more than 43,600 metric tons. Projects entered also eliminated 61,000 tons of landfill waste and 4,800 tons of packaging material, conserved 295 million gallons of water and delivered more than $28 million in savings, the company said.
