ENVIRONMENTAL

Here are some of the things we do towards sustainability.

• Financially sustainable; “You can’t be green if you are in the red”

• Energy Generation & Use

• Waste Elimination, Reduction, Recycling

• Product and Process Design

• Transport

• Flour from environmentally farmed grains

Sustainability is a series of trade-offs and for us is a way of life.

• We adopt new technologies as they become proven

• We’ve been minimising waste, reusing and recycling for decades

• We repair before we renew where possible

SOLAR POWER

• 60% of our daytime electricity is generated by onsite solar panels

Combined Heat and Power PLANT

When making electricity, 54% of the energy is lost in the power stations and transmission over vast distances.** At Fosters Bakery we have our own electricity on-site power station with heat reclaim.

• Virtually zero energy is lost in transmission.

• “Waste” heat is used for heating our hot water, space heating and to power our provers and drying cabinet.

• (coming soon from “waste” heat: absorption refrigeration for air conditioning and chilled water in summer months)

**SOURCE: The Association for Decentralised Energy

BACK UP EMERGENCY GENERATION

Just in case we lose power form our CHP plant and the mains. We’ll keep on baking and the refrigerators will stay cold to protect the food. It’s powered by diesel so we don’t run it unless we need to . . . when all else fails.

LIGHTING

• All Low power LED lighting

• Automatic switching on and off where practicable

COMPRESSED AIR

• A lot of our equipment runs on compressed air. Our compressors are energy efficient with soft ramp up and shut down for variable load.

RECYCLING

• Wooden Pallets - sent for repair where possible, donated to make furniture.

• Official partners with the UK leading pallet pool CHEP to collect empty pallets on our returning vehicles for reuse.

• Waste bread - recycled to animal feed locally.

• Rigid Plastics - compacted and recycled

• Flexible Plastics - compacted and recycled

• Cardboard - compacted and recycled

• Metal - to local metal recycling centre

• Paper - recycled

• Electrical Equipment - Stored on site and sent to reprocessing company

• Spent Equipment - refurbished OR robbed for spare parts and the rest recycled

MINIMISING

• Case sizes and pallet sizes are optimised

• Information printed directly on cases eliminates the need for labels

• Ingredients weighed into reusable tubs instead of single use plastic bags

TRANSPORT

• Company cars are either all electric or plug in hybrid

• 3 Vehicle charging points on site

• 1 fully electric van

• Different sizes of delivery truck for different size loads and destinations.

• Cycle to work scheme to help workers buy cycles tax free with interest free loans. Enhanced on site security for workers bikes

• Our village location means many workers live locally and walk to work

Regenerative Farmed Flour

• Regeneratively farmed products available on request

• Crops grown in an environmentally sound way to regenerate the soil and biodiversity of the countryside

• Partnership with farmers, flour miller and we, the baker

OTHER STUFF

• Surface water from car parks cleaned before discharge

• We buy refurbished computers rather than new.

• We repair and repurpose equipment wherever practicable. We have a well equipped maintenance workshop with wide capabilities for all manner of engineering tasks.

• Our canteen furniture was made from wooden floorboards rescued from a Victorian mill being demolished.

• We rescued office partitioning from a factory in Wakefield being demolished and reused it for our bakery offices.

• We are installing 6 bird boxes and 6 bat boxes around our bakery site to encourage small nesting birds and bats. [this could be part of our pest control to reduce the insects clogging up our air intake filters :) ]

RESEARCH

We collaborate with universities on sustainable matters from time to time, where we believe we can help