Pictured (l-r): Keith Irvine (Group Supply Chain Director, Moy Park), Mark Price (Managing Director, Waitrose) and Declan Cunningham (Head of Risk Management, Environment & Safety, Moy Park)

The awards, which recognise suppliers who demonstrate outstanding initiatives to enhance the sustainability of their businesses, saw Moy Park come out on top in the ‘Treading Lightly’- carbon and ‘Treading Lightly’ – waste categories for the company’s efforts to reduce their carbon emissions, waste and water usage.

Moy Park won both categories for achieving carbon and energy savings of 11,300t CO2e and £2million in 2012 and for diverting over 96 per cent of its waste away from landfill across all of its UK processing sites – with the long term goal of diverting 100 per cent of its waste from landfill.

Mike Mullan, Human Resources and Business Improvement Director at Moy Park, commented, “It is a great honour for Moy Park to receive two Waitrose Way awards for our achievements in carbon and waste reduction and this reflects the dedication and support from all our teams for the common sustainability goals we share with Waitrose”.

He continued, “As a business, we are committed to acting responsibly and reducing the environmental impact of our operations. We view waste as a valuable commodity, therefore as much waste as possible is either recycled or recovered as energy. We will continue to work towards increased sustainability throughout 2013/14 on a range of proposed schemes – from an increased focus on water recovery and recycling across our primary sites to the upgrade of refrigeration systems and a thermal heat recovery initiative. This ethos is central to our long-term business strategy and showcases our efforts to maintain a positive reputation as a responsible business.”

Quentin Clark, Head of Sustainability and Ethical Sourcing at Waitrose said: “These awards are a fantastic way of celebrating the hard work that our suppliers have been doing to improve the sustainability of their businesses and ultimately the Waitrose business as a whole. It was hard to pick the winners from such a high standard of applicants and we are delighted that so many suppliers share the same goals that we do.”

Susan Nisbet, WRAP, said: “This is a product area in which it is challenging to achieve reductions in waste. Moy Park has also considered reduction of waste at source, which is key in terms of waste minimisation and waste hierarchy. They are also looking to continuously improve to build on this further and are sharing knowledge with other business to share further learning in the supply chain.”