As a Group, we continue to make progress against our Zero Waste to Landfill target. Our Foods division have already achieved this goal and across the rest of the Group, just 10% of our total waste volumes currently go to landfill. We are working hard with our sites to look at ways to continue to reduce those volumes and we remain committed to achieving our 2020 goal.

As a group, we continue to focus on reducing, reusing and recycling our waste streams. Under the Towards 2020 programme, we targeted the goal of zero waste to landfill and while our Consumer Foods division have already achieved this goal, we still have some work to do to reach this milestone across the Group. To date we have reduced landfill volumes by 41% versus our 2013 baseline and 89% of our waste volumes are currently diverted.

We dispose of all waste responsibly and less than 1% of our total waste volumes are categorised as hazardous, the majority of which is recycled. For non-hazardous waste streams, we look for opportunities to recover and reuse materials within our own operations or elsewhere. In 2019, 74% of our waste volumes were recovered or recycled as we continue to look for ways to keep materials in use and complete our zero waste to landfill goal.

With over 800 million people worldwide living with hunger, it is difficult to accept that one third of the food produced each year is lost or wasted. In addition to the loss of valuable food and the waste of resources used to produce it, food waste sent to landfill contributes further to climate change due to the emissions released as it decomposes.

Our Consumer Foods business (Kerry Foods) is one of the leading suppliers of added-value branded and customer branded chilled food products in selected European Markets.  Like many food businesses, there are times when we have surplus product that meets our quality requirements but which cannot be sold.

Over the last four years, we have been working with partners in the UK and Ireland to find ways to redistribute this food to those in need within local communities. Building on this work, Kerry Foods has been committed to halving food waste across its production processes by 2030, in support of the Champions 12.3 initiative and in 2020 we will extend this commitment across the Group.

Packaging plays a critical role in protecting product quality and maintaining shelf life, but we know that consumers are increasingly concerned about how this packaging is produced and disposed of. Already 91% of our fibre based packaging comes from sources that are certified, verified or recycled and much of the plastic packaging we use goes to other companies with similar waste recovery programmes, however, we continue to look for more sustainable packaging formats.

Our Consumer Foods business places plastic packaging directly onto the consumer market. In 2018, Kerry Foods joined the UK Plastics Pact, adopting a target for 100% of its plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. In 2019, work has continued to deliver on these goals with numerous projects across the division. One project involved the removal of non-recyclable black CPET trays from 70 million ready-to-eat meals. This first-to-market solution uses trays that are fully recyclable, detectable and recoverable in the UK recycling system and contain 85% post-consumer recycled content.