CorpComms Magazine

Frozen foods manufacturer Birds Eye, whose product range of peas, fish fingers and Arctic Rolls are eaten by 4.3 million people in the UK every day, is to unveil a company-wide sustainability programme on 22 July.

The Forever Food initiative is particularly interesting because Birds Eye is owned by private equity firm Permira, and corporate environmental policies are traditionally associated with publicly quoted companies.

Birds Eye has committed to sourcing 100 per cent of wild and farmed fish from certified fisheries by 2012, and to cut packaging by 15 per cent in the same time scale.

It has also pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 per cent and water consumption by 20 per cent by 2020, and to send zero waste to landfill from its UK operations by 2015.

The plan has been developed in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund, the Marine Stewardship Council, the Food and Drink Federation and the Prince's Countryside Fund.

It is not the first time that Birds Eye has dabbled with sustainability. The frozen foods company, which sold 43 million bags of garden peas last year, co-founded the Marine Stewardship Council with the World Wildlife Fund in 1995.

And in 2002, it switched from palm oil to sunflower oil to cut down on fat and it launched Alaskan Pollock fish fingers in 2007 to reduce pressure on cod supplies.

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