Walking the talk: learning sustainability practices at Bühler Networking Days 

The environment is changing — and not for the better. Heat waves, melting ice, and CO₂ levels are increasing all over the world. It’s now imperative that everyone makes their own contribution to save it.

Bühler’s Networking Days, at its HQ in Uzwil, Switzerland, presents discussions on everything from small efforts to reduce an individual’s footprint, to concerted, company-wide efforts to protect natural resources, minimise adverse environmental impacts, and lead the way toward a more sustainable future.

We were asked, indirectly, what does sustainability mean to us?

Sustainability to me is always evolving – It is more of a journey than something fully tangible. Overall, sustainability involves all the ways we can minimise our impact on the planet’s current state, and actively promoting a healthy environment. Personally, that journey has involved reducing my production of waste and purchasing items packaging free whenever I can.

Over the course of the two days, Bühler is sharing a close look at its sustainability practices, and how it pushes them forward.

Bühler takes its sustainability mission to heart. It has long been at the forefront of delivering innovations that foster tangible change by empowering companies in the supply chain to do their part in protecting our planet.

Bühler, though, empowers its customers to run more environmentally conscious businesses. It sees enabling customers as the key component of its sustainability efforts. There’s a lot it is doing internally. But is confident, if it can make even a fraction of that difference across the customer base, that’s a massive multiplier to anything it can do within the organisation alone.

This is definitely an exciting time in our industry, as numerous advanced technologies have the potential to transform the food and drink industries in ways that better conserve resources, limit pollution, and protect the natural environment.

The business case for sustainability is pretty well established. There’s a virtuous circle through which doing the right thing for the planet and for the business reinforce each other.

Retailers want to know the companies they work with share their values — that they are spending their money with a company that is part of the solution, not the problem.

That’s long been true, but in recent years there’s been a dramatic rise in the sense of urgency, from the boardroom on down, for embedding positive environmental and social impacts across all aspects of the business. This has been accompanied by a greater recognition of the foundational role technology plays in supporting such initiatives.

• Rodney Jack, editor, Food & Drink Technology.
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