Food and Beverage Manufacturing

Engage with your key ingredient suppliers

Collaborating with suppliers is key to lowering the emissions linked to your most impactful ingredients. Drive meaningful change across their supply chains by building strong partnerships and encouraging sustainable practices.

This set of actions forms part of the Food and Beverage Manufacturing action checklist.

Back to “Minimize your ingredient emissions through reformulation” Food and beverage manufacturing

Key steps for SMEs to take

1. Analyze

Analyze your ingredients to identify those with the highest impact on emissions.

2. Identify

When procuring, ask suppliers questions about their sustainability practises to identify those with lower emissions and ingredients and track their performance.

3. Secure buy-in

Share your internal wins to secure buy-in and progress to promote the business case of climate action with suppliers.

4. Share guidance

Share resources and guidance with your suppliers to support them with their emissions reductions.

5. Make a public commitment

Make a public statement committing to climate action and share it with your supply chain, asking them to make a commitment also.

Examples of SME actions

When procuring, engage suppliers by asking them questions on their practises such as: • Any internal climate initiatives • Renewable energy sourcing • Public emissions disclosure • Public climate commitments.

Use suppliers who: • Set emissions reduction targets • Measure and publicly disclose their emissions • Have low carbon certification and labels on their products • Are local – reducing emissions from transport • Have achieved measurable emissions reductions.

Consider shifting more business towards those suppliers that have the most well-developed climate action plans.

Create bonus structures for suppliers where achieving an emissions reduction can equate to a monetary award.

Encourage suppliers to act by sharing resources such as the SME Climate Hub.

Learn about production methods used by suppliers and ask suppliers questions about their sustainability practises.