Walkers and the Carbon Trust

The Carbon Trust is a private company funded by the government. Their role is to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy. Part of what they do is delivering practical solutions to businesses to reduce their carbon emissions.

Walkers have been working with the Carbon Trust since 2001 to improve our environmental performance. Over that time, they have helped us to implement energy-reducing initiatives, cutting our energy use, per kilo, by one third and our water use, per kilo, by almost half; and we are committed to achieving further reductions, year-on-year.

More recently, the Carbon Trust has also helped us to carbon footprint some of our products. This was an important step in enabling us to understand where to focus our resources to reduce carbon. For instance, we recognised the opportunity to significantly reduce our food miles, therefore reducing our impact on the environment, by sourcing our potatoes domestically. Now we use only 100% Great British potatoes - a move that has been widely applauded by the British farming community and has the support of the National Farmers' Union and the British Potato Council.

As the debate on climate change and carbon emissions increases, the Carbon Trust believe that now is the time for companies to not only start measuring and reducing their carbon emissions, but to start communicating their work to consumers. Pioneering this important initiative, Walkers, along with other leading UK brands are working with the Carbon Trust on the initial phase of the carbon reduction labelling scheme.

This initiative is an important step in making a real difference - highlighting the issue to consumers and getting industry to react. Walkers are very proud to be one of the leading companies in making this happen.

In fact, in March 2007, Walkers was one of the first consumer brands to pioneer carbon labelling, launching the initiative with our 34.5g bags of Cheese & Onion crisps. And that was just the beginning, from the end of July 2007, all flavours of Walkers Crisps (34.5g bags and 50g 'Big Eat' bags) will be carbon labelled, and we plan to carry this initiative forward to every product in the Walkers range.

Neil Campbell, of Walkers, said, "We wholeheartedly believe that taking action to raise awareness of carbon as an issue is the right thing to do and are committed to reducing the carbon footprint of our products. We hope this will empower people to make more informed choices about the products they are buying."

For more information on the Carbon Trust's work, visit the Carbon Trust website.