Earth Day Every Day at Walkers Shortbread

Happy Earth Day to all our dear customers! As proud past recipients of the Green Apple Environment Award, we are Team Earth through and through. Protecting our beautiful community where the World's Finest Shortbread originates is one of our utmost priorities. From production to delivery, we are committed to protecting the environment and ensuring our actions reflect these goals. We are proud to share our sustainable practices below from the beginning step to our finished product on your pantry shelf.

Raw Materials

We source raw ingredients locally as much as we can and use sustainable energy wherever possible. This can be seen at all our factories with an energy-efficient induction lighting program which uses 50% less energy than conventional lighting. The bulbs last for 20 years without replacement, which in itself, reduces our carbon dioxide emissions by 600 tonnes per year.

As part of the Company’s on-going commitment to environmental improvement, we recently installed 80 solar panels on the roof of our newest factory. This system of PV (photovoltaic) panels will save up to 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere each year.

Also, being a member of the government-controlled CCA (Climate Change Agreement) since its inception in 1998, we made it a point to successfully meet all our energy reduction targets. The results of the audit conducted by the Carbon Trust demonstrate we reduced our carbon emissions by 16.6% to date since 2003.

Production

The Walkers products you love dearly are baked with no genetically modified ingredients, artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, or hydrogenated fats. In addition, no bovine growth hormones or antibiotics are given to the free-range, grass-fed cows that produce the rich, creamy milk which becomes the butter used in our family’s shortbread recipe.

We are in full compliance with government wastewater regulations and our factories have fitted timers and spray nozzles to hand-wash station. Through these efforts, we save an average of 500,000 liters of water per year. In addition, we have a great water-monitoring program in place and water meters are recorded weekly.

Energy-efficient condensing boilers have been installed in three of our factories at Aberlour giving a 40% efficiency saving compared to traditional boilers.

Our team is making efforts to ensure only necessary volumes of plastic are used by making packaging reductions. Our skillets and films have been reduced in thickness as far as practically possible. And we switched the product trays (skillets) from colored plastic to clear plastic as these clear trays are recyclable.

Waste Management

We are proud to say that 95% of the total waste produced by us is recycled. This includes materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, aluminum, tins, and wood. Our food waste gets recycled for animal feed, and fat processed for use as agricultural fertilizer. And we keep exploring other sustainable options in collaboration with Zero Waste Scotland.

On-site plastic reduction activities include the banning of plastic straws for staff use in break rooms; employees are encouraged to take their own cups into work and store them to reduce the volume of single use plastics. New biodegradable packaging is being trialed in our break rooms for staff use in efforts to significantly reduce the volume of non-recyclable plastics used. There is an ongoing program of communicating with suppliers to look at the volume of plastic packaging that comes in with ingredients or packaging stocks and reduce it where possible.

Another of our pro-environmental achievements is our recent investment in a substantial treatment plant to process wastewater collected at our Aberlour site. This is to ensure that we comply with the limits set by Scottish Water.

Transportation

Mainly utilizing local truckers, we implement full-load deliveries and full usage of backfill on return journeys when possible. We also provide complimentary bus travel, used by about 600 shift employees each day, to and from work as an additional effort to help the environment.

We hope the World’s Finest Shortbread tastes even better after learning how the Walkers products you enjoy are made using sustainable practices everywhere possible.

Celebrate this day by actively partaking in your local Earth Day projects and then reward yourself with these fun and easy-to-make adorable Earth Day Cookies.