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24 January 2012 | Adam Leach
A new bottle design that enabled
drinks giant Diageo to cut CO2 emissions by 1,500 tonnes for Smirnoff Ice could be
adopted by its other brands.
Developed by the Brazilian branch
of the company, the redesigned bottle helped cut emissions by making it
stronger and reducing the amount of glass required. In all, the redesigned
receptacle eliminated 2,500 metric tonnes of glass, equivalent to a reduction
of 1,500 tonnes of CO2.
Asked whether the initiative will
be spread across the company, head of environment at Diageo Michael Alexander,
told SM: “It will be shared through
the Smirnoff global team by saying ‘look what Brazil has done’. It will be a
country-by-country decision, but obviously that has set a precedent and
therefore will encourage others to go down the same route with their own
priorities and brand redesign.”
Alexander, who helped develop the
company’s Sustainable Packaging
Guidelines published in December, said Diageo met with suppliers and held
workshops to outline its commitment to sustainability and motivate those in its
supply chain to follow suit. He said it is an area in which the company is
looking to increase its efforts: “Although we’ve done some, we’re absolutely
committed to working further with our suppliers and we will do more on it.
"Suppliers are absolutely critical and some of it is
going to be around talking to them about our own ideas on how to deliver
it and the other aspect is how they can deliver on it. A lot of them
are design specialists, so it may be that they come up with the new
ideas. It’s a two-way process.”
By 2015, Diageo has committed to
reducing the average unit weight of its product packaging by 10 per cent. While
the carbon reduction achieved through the Smirnoff Ice initiative was an
example of ‘lightweighting’ – reducing the weight of packaging – the company
explains that it will look at the possibility of ‘heavyweighting’ if it means
that more robust packaging can be used multiple times.
