You might not have heard of Diageo, but you know its products: Smirnoff, Guinness, Baileys, Gordon’s, José Cuervo and Johnnie Walker are just a handful of the company’s owned brands. A hundred and seven million measures of Diageo’s products are consumed worldwide every day. Each year, the drinks giant generates more than 500,000 tonnes of waste, and produces over 100 million beverage containers. But with great power comes great responsibility, so what is Diageo doing to cut down on waste and packaging?

Cameronbridge Grain Distillery, which produces grain whisky for Diageo’s blended whiskies, as well as gin and vodka, has recently increased its capacity and, associated with this, is building a £65 million bioenergy plant. When the plans to expand the site were proposed, Diageo worked with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) on a new approach to the disposal of spent wash – a liquid waste made up of water, yeast and spent grains. Previously (and entirely legally), it was pumped directly into the sea, but in large quantities the substance poses a risk to sea creatures and plants as it requires so much oxygen to break down. So, Diageo devised a bioenergy plant combining anaerobic digestion (AD), biomass combustion and water treatment to provide the distillery with between 60 and 80 per cent of its electricity (five or six megawatts), close to 100 per cent of its thermal energy (25 megawatts) and 30 per cent of its water.

The system makes the most of the distillery’s main waste product. Spent wash is fed into a belt press, which squeezes out all the moisture to produce a dry cake. This can then be burnt to create thermal energy and turn a generator to create electricity. The leftover liquid from the belt press continues on to a wet AD plant to produce biogas. The final remaining watery waste from the AD process is taken to the water treatment plant, recycled and returned to the distillery for reuse. The biomass burner burns 15 to 20 tonnes of material per hour, and between them these three processes are expected to use up all of the site’s available spent wash. The plant isn’t a one-off gesture, either: Diageo included a combined AD and biomass plant at its new £40 million Roseisle distillery in 2010, and recently announced plans to invest £6 million in a biomass plant in Glenlossie.

The company is also setting its sights high in terms of packaging. Diageo has almost achieved its target of ‘100 per cent recyclable packaging by 2015’, currently sitting at 98 per cent. The remaining two per cent – made up of foil, PVC, mixed plastics, ceramics and laminates – is still under scrutiny and gradually being phased out in favour of sustainable alternatives. Whisky bottles, for example, are often packaged in shiny boxes made from the material metpol (metalised polyester). “If we work with the packaging suppliers and can produce an equally shiny box, but not using the metpol, then that would be to our advantage in terms of trying to meet our sustainability targets,” says Michael Alexander, Diageo’s Head of Environment.

Diageo’s packaging is made from 35 per cent recycled content, and it aims to improve to 42 per cent by 2015. Glass is far and away the most-used material, and recycled content can stretch to 85 per cent for brands that use green glass, such as Gordon’s Gin. “For clear glass, obviously there are bigger challenges”, Alexander admits. “With green glass, any discrepancies or faults don’t show up, whereas when recycling clear glass the separation [of colours] has got to be much more distinct.” This means that the amount of green glass cullet available to Diageo far outstrips clear – something the company needs to work on.

Lightweighting is also high on the agenda, with Diageo counting significant glass savings from initiatives implemented this year. Lightweighting Smirnoff Ice bottles in Brazil by 17.5 per cent has saved 2,500 tonnes of glass, whilst using less glass for Harp lager in Nigeria saves 2,400 tonnes of packaging per year. Most packaging reduction initiatives have targeted high-volume, low-value brands, whilst smaller ones have been largely ignored. “There might be generic things that we can do [for premium brands], like the recycled content of our cardboard in boxes that we use, but we’ve not been lightweighting any of the higher value brands at the moment because we’ve still got a long way to go with the higher impact lightweighting with the highvolume brands.”

These initiatives are part of Diageo’s drive to reduce its environmental impact, with a key target of ‘zero waste to landfill by 2015’. Since 2007, the company has cut the amount of waste sent to landfill by 70 per cent, with 20 production sites worldwide now sending no waste to landfill. Whilst he was unable to supply exact figures, Alexander claims that the vast majority of this diverted waste is reused or recycled, with a small proportion going to energy recovery facilities.

Diageo’s global packaging plant in Leven, Scotland, for instance, currently sends over 97 per cent of materials for recycling. Cardboard layer pads from pallets are sent to an external company to be made into boxes; barrel char (wood from the inside of barrels burnt to enhance flavour), spirit filter sheets (for removing impurities), paper hand towels and restaurant food waste are all sent to the TEG composting plant near Perth; even vending machine cups are saved – 48,000 are recycled monthly via the Save-a-Cup scheme. The plant also has an in-house magazine – Waste Watchers – to encourage the recycling culture. Packaging and waste reduction are also being tackled by the Scotch whisky industry as a whole. Some brands, such as Chivas Brothers’ 100 Pipers, have proved lightweightied glass viable for containing firewater, as part of WRAP’s ‘Container Lite’ scheme. “Much of these challenges are being addressed by the whisky industry,” Alexander confirms. “We’re being very proactive and Diageo’s kind of led the way in the investments we’ve made, but others certainly have similar plans in the offing.” Watch this space.