About Us
Our Businesses
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Responsibility
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About Us
Our Businesses
Investors
Responsibility
Media
We have a long history of finding ways to make more from less and maximise the use of by-products and co-products from our operations. We believe that waste materials are simply products for which we have not yet found a use. With that in mind, our businesses are implementing practices to reuse, recycle or reduce food, plastic and textile waste.
Pressed sugar beet pulp, which is a by-product from sugar production, and dried animal feed, which British Sugar manufactures from the pulp, Wissington, UK
Our businesses produce many commercially viable products from sources potentially considered waste. For example, our sugar businesses have become a major supplier of raw materials for animal feed, an important feedstock source for many different sectors, and is a supplier of raffinate and betaine for use in the petrochemical and pharmaceutical sectors.
Across the Group, we generated 609 kt of waste in 2024 which is a 19% increase compared with the 510 kt tonnes generated in 2023. This increase is primarily due to our sugar business in Spain operating longer campaigns and processing larger quantities of sugar beet, as well as management of settlement ponds to maintain efficient operations. The soil from the settlement ponds is sent off-site for agricultural purposes as fertiliser and soil conditioning.
Of the total waste generated, 87% was sent for recycling or other beneficial use. In 2023/24, we registered a 9% annual decrease of waste sent to landfill from 88kt to 80kt which reflects the efforts of our businesses to reduce waste streams and find alternative uses for the materials. In 2023/24, 16% of all factories achieved zero waste to landfill and 38% recycled or reused 95% or more of their total generated waste. See our data page for more details on our waste data.
Total waste generated and the percentage sent for recycling or other beneficial use
(000 tonnes)
Total waste generated 2024, by segment
(000 tonnes)
Our food businesses are highly efficient and aim to avoid products going to waste by donating surpluses to food banks, community groups and charities. Once no longer fit for human consumption, food waste can be used as animal feed or in energy generation.
Some businesses use on-site anaerobic digesters to generate biogas from our waste streams. For example, our sugar businesses in Africa use bagasse, the dry fibrous material that remains after crushing sugar cane as feedstock to generate up to 87% of the annual power requirements of their own factories and to export surplus electricity into national grids.
In Retail, Primark has worked with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation since 2018 as part of its ‘Make Fashion Circular’ initiative. In 2021, it became a Network Partner of the Foundation and joined its Advisory Board for Fashion. Primark utilised the Foundation’s design principles to create its Circular Product Standard, a framework for how it intends to design products now and in the future. Primark has committed to strengthening the durability of its clothes by 2025 and to make more clothes that are recycled by design by 2027. It is focused on scaling circular design in certain categories, creating specific product guidelines and engaging and training colleagues and suppliers on progressing and scaling circular design.
As a leading provider of food, ingredients and clothing, packaging contributes significantly to our groupwide environmental footprint. Paper is the main packaging material used across the Group, followed by plastic and glass. Our businesses also use wood, steel, aluminium and a number of other materials.
Though we fully recognise the harmful effects of plastic waste on ecosystems, plastic currently plays a vital role in both ensuring the safety and quality of products and reducing food waste by extending the shelf life of food. Our challenge is to use plastic materials responsibly and find solutions that balance the needs of our customers and our desire to reduce the impact of plastics on ecosystems. Where viable, our businesses are doing this by removing unnecessary packaging, switching to more easily recyclable types of plastic and increasing the use of recycled content in the plastics we use.
Our businesses also demonstrate their commitment to tackling plastic and packaging challenges by involvement with and support for a number of collaborative industry pacts and programmes, including the WRAP UK Plastics Pact and the Soft Plastic Recycling Scheme in New Zealand.
In 2024, our businesses used 241 kt of packaging compared with 246 kt used in 2023, marking a 2% decrease year-on-year. See our data page for more details on plastic and packaging. Our food businesses have contributed to this decrease by reducing packaging, improving recyclability and replacing plastic with alternative materials such as cardboard. For example, AB World Foods reduced the weight of Patak’s glass packaging for a sauce range, eliminating approximately 192 tonnes of glass and 6.1 tonnes of steel. Twinings is removing plastic overwraps across its markets and switching to 100% recyclable paper envelopes on individual tea bags, and 97% of sugar packaging from our sugr businesses in Africa is now recyclable. As one of its main sources of non-clothing waste, product packaging is a priority focus area for Primark. The business has committed to removing all single-use plastic by 2027, and has developed short, medium and long-term packaging roadmaps to achieve this objective.
Quantity of packaging used
(000 tonnes)
Cardboard hangers on Primark's baby clothes range
Δ EY has provided limited independent assurance over the 2024 metrics. See our data page for the assurance statement.
