Ben_and_Jerry's

Ben & Jerry’s is bringing euphoric ice cream to folks around the world. From the first licensed Scoop Shop in Israel in 1988 to our latest forays into Europe, we’ve introduced our chunky and smooth flavors and sense of caring capitalism to millions of new fans. • We said goodbye to the Eco-Pint, the unbleached paperboard pint container used to package our ice cream, after nine years. We had hoped that other food companies would join us in moving toward unbleached paperboard packaging, an environmentally friendly material that does not require the use of chlorine bleach. But since the market for this kind of packaging never grew much beyond Ben & Jerry’s, we ran into increasing supply, quality, and cost challenges. In the fall of 2006, we transitioned to a new bleached paperboard container for our pints. Our new supplier has an excellent track record of sustainable forestry practices and can help us achieve our long-held goal of finding a non-petroleum based, renewable coating for our pint package. The move away from the Eco-Pint will also allow us to eliminate approximately 1,000 tons of waste annually in our packaging supply chain. All in all, we feel this is a necessary step sideways that will allow us to keep moving forward on our journey to reduce the environmental impacts of our packaging. • For years, we’ve sought out suppliers like Greyston Bakery who deliver environmental and social benefits in addition to the ingredients we need to make and package our ice cream. Measured by total dollars, our Values-Led Sourcing declined in 2006, to 49% of our raw material spend (i.e., ingredients, dairy, packaging), driven largely by the low milk prices we saw in 2006. We did not add any new VLS initiatives in 2006, but we did make plans that will likely increase our VLS spend in 2007, including the following: • We made the decision in 2006 to convert the vanilla extract in our smooth Vanilla ice cream — and the cocoa powder in our smooth Chocolate ice cream — to Fair Trade Certified in 2007. Given the excellent track record and the growing consumer awareness of Fair Trade certification, we’re excited about the change. We will continue to source all of our coffee extract from Fair Trade sources, as we have since 2005. • We reached and exceeded all of the environmental performance goals at our Vermont manufacturing plants, reducing our water use, solid waste, product waste, and greenhouse gas emissions while increasing recycling. • We reached our Company’s goal to reduce our normalized CO2 emissions (emissions per gallon of product) by 10% over the five year period from 2002 to the end of 2006. Overall, we achieved a 32% reduction in normalized CO2 emissions in these five years. On an absolute basis, we generated 2% more CO2 emissions in 2006 over our 2002 levels, while our production increased by double digits. In addition, we offset the environmental impact of 100% of these emissions through the purchase of “carbon offsets” from NativeEnergy. • We began a focused effort in 2006 to put our CO2 emissions in a broader perspective by calculating a new metric known as Ben & Jerry’s Global Warming Social Footprint. Working with the Center for Sustainable Innovation, we compared our manufacturing carbon dioxide emissions to one of the most aggressive global plans to combat global warming, known as the WRE350 Plan. We found that our performance over the last six years narrowly missed the targets of the WRE350 Plan. Going forward, the footprint gives us valuable targets to aim for as we shape our long-term climate change strategy. • We continue to work closely with the farmers who supply our milk and cream on both sides of the Atlantic, to help them implement sustainable practices on the farm. In 2006, we brought 11 farmers and their families and several project advisors from our European Caring Dairy program to Vermont where they discussed best practices with some of the farmers in our Dairy Stewardship Alliance. Participants told us the exchange was a valuable experience on the path to improved environmental, social, and economic outcomes on their farms. Each of Ben & Jerry’s Company sites (Waterbury, St. Albans, South Burlington) has a Green Team comprised of employees interested in environmental issues. These employee-led teams come up with projects, activities and events that highlight relevant environmental issues within the Company and beyond. In 2006, Company Green Teams initiated the following projects to support community and employee environmental awareness: • Earth Day celebrations with daily environmental tips • Corporate Sponsor for “Vermont Green Up Day” in which employees participated in road clean-up projects near their facility • Arbor Day celebration — young spruce tree give-away to employees • “Pedal for Progress” — a nonprofit that collects bikes and donates them to underprivileged people throughout the world who need bikes to get to jobs, attend school or get produce to market • Teamed with the Solid Waste District for the Annual community Christmas tree mulching event that included food shelf donations • “Environmental Tidbits” — regular e-mail topics focused on environmental issues that employees may find interesting • Donation of T-8 Bulbs to a local school after the site upgraded their energy efficient lights • Worm composting workshop for employees and local residents In 2006, we also continued our efforts to reduce our use of bleached paper by transitioning to the use of non-bleached paper for our cake and cookie packaging. Of course the best environmental effort we can make is to reduce the amount of packaging we use in general! TECHNOLOGY Sounds Cool! Thermoacoustic Refrigeration (TAR) is an alternative refrigeration technology that utilizes sound waves to create cooling, as opposed to the traditional means of mechanical refrigeration reliant on the compression and expansion of speci alized gases. Since there are more than 1.8 million ice cream cabinets in use worldwide, TAR has the potential to eliminate a significant amount of environmentally harmful and flammable gases from the process of mechanical refrigeration. In 1999, Ben & Jerry’s first teamed up with Acoustics Professor Steven Garrett and fellow researchers at Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, where we helped fund a project to develop an environmentally-friendly, compact freezer cabinet that uses thermoacoustic technology. In 2002, Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever Research partnered to fund a second round of research on TAR at Penn State University. At the 2004 Earth Day Celebration in New York City, Penn State researchers and Ben & Jerry’s successfully debuted the first working ice cream cabinet powered by a thermoacoustic engine. The engine was functionally integrated into a standard ice cream cabinet and demonstrated in use, cooling ice cream for two public events. Both of these initial presentations showed that ice cream could be cooled to practical operating temperatures (-20° C) and could overcome typical field conditions (125 W of cooling power) using a thermoacoustically-powered device. The operating prototype and related research was also presented at the Refrigerants, Naturally Conference in Brussels, Belgium, on June 22, 2004. This conference, co-sponsored by the United Nations Environmental Program, Greenpeace, Unilever, Coca-Cola and McDonalds, is a forum dedicated to exploring and presenting the latest developments in mechanical refrigeration that do not rely on environmentally-harmful gases such as HFCs and CFCs. At Ben & Jerry’s we launched a fun, animated presentation called “Sounds Cool,” on our website, which includes information about the environmental dangers of common refrigerants; the options that thermoacoustics and alternative technologies offer; and links to additional information. Watch the presentation. Our funded research on TAR ended in 2004 with the completion of the prototype. Still, Ben & Jerry’s intends to find new ways to support this developing technology by exploring options for beta testing of early commercial units. In 2004, Penn State negotiated the sale of intellectual property rights to the newly founded Thermoacoustics Corporation (TAC). Penn State researchers also secured two additional years of venture capital funding from the TAC to continue research into commercial application of the technology. In 2005, Thermoacoustic Corporation (TAC) shifted its focus from ice cream cabinet applications to other classes of cooling equipment in collaboration with a third party joint development partner. This initiative, while not targeted toward a device that Ben & Jerry’s might immediately use in its distribution system, is very promising in that it may lead to establishing the commercial viability of this emerging, environmentally superior technology for use in other mechanical cooling applications. Ben & Jerry’s was not under contract with Penn State or TAC for research in 2006. Ben & Jerry’s Research and Development department continues to stay in close contact with TAC and has offered assistance with providing potential test applications of the emerging devices, if applicable. Company co-founder Ben Cohen once said, “Business has a responsibility to give back to The community”