Compass Group UK & Ireland recognised as Net Zero Pioneer by leading environmental organisation Business Green
We are honoured to be featured in Business Green’s inaugural Net Zero Pioneers Report.
We are one of 50 companies who have been identified as the “UK's most innovative and impactful businesses and organisations working on building a net zero future”*.
As the UK’s largest food and support services business, we recognise both our impacts and our dependencies on the planet and the responsibility we have to achieve change at scale.
This year has seen us focus on how we can reformulate our menus to reduce the embodied carbon on the plate. We serve over 180.9 meals a year, across 4,000 sites in the UK. We have partnered with Foodsteps, the UK-based tech company, who has been supporting with analysing over 90,000 of our recipes to help identify where we can reduce the carbon of the food that we serve.
Since announcing our ambition in May 2021, our teams have been working to identify how we can transition our business models to achieve more sustainable practices. Our learnings reaffirm there is no easy route forward, but we are encouraged by the progress to date and are committed to sharing these in a first iteration of what a transition plan needs to look like to lead our industry.
Carolyn Ball, Compass' Director for Delivery of Net Zero:
"Partnering with Foodsteps across our UK and Ireland business is helping us to accelerate progress in a data-driven way that allows us to better support our clients and their employees. The increasing convergence towards one global, standardised, diet is unsustainable and underlines why the menu is such a powerful and important ally for meaningful change.
"Focusing on better data so our chefs and operational teams are informed, empowered, and recognised for the positive impact they can have in every single service, is what we're trying to achieve together."
Our net zero targets are set out in Our Climate Promise roadmap and we reported on our progress to date in our first Climate Impact Report earlier published this year, which included highlights such as:
Scope 3 – Category 1 (87.46% of FY19 baseline footprint)
**All reductions referenced below account for absolute reductions recorded between FY19 – FY22
-20.37% reduction in food and drink emissions, including:
- -36.11% reduction in emissions from animal proteins; the combined result of emissions reduction achieved in carbon-intensive subcategories, incl.
- -28.39% reduction in emissions from meat
- -46.64% reduction in emissions from dairy and cheese
- -25.28% reduction in emissions from fish and seafood
- 100% renewable electricity; up from 2% in 2019 – achieving its target, validated by the SBTi in September 2021.
- 100% electric car policy introduced early (target date was 2024); 33% of fleet are now electric, 18% are hybrid and 100% on order are EV.
- Site-specific carbon footprinting tool developed to model decarbonisation pathways
- 90,000+ recipe reformulations underway by 4,000+ strong chef community - in support of the daily carbon budget per person, per day of 2.45kg CO2e, as recommended by the EAT-Lancet Commission.
- Over 25,200 completions of mandated Climate Net Zero module in level 2 frontline team catering
- Food waste tracking system updated to measure and report on food waste across five categories (out of date; plate; post-production; preproduction; and retail)
We have recently announced our intention to align our next climate impact report with the recommendations of the final Disclosure Framework.
*About the Business Green report:
