SEPA Signs SGA with Nestlé UK and Ireland

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) has signed the Sustainable Growth Agreement (SGA) with Nestlé UK and Ireland, in a bid to support businesses to move beyond compliance with Scotland’s environmental law.  

The agreement will cover three main areas: 

• Developing circular economy opportunities in food production, food waste and packaging within Scotland for Nestlé UK & Ireland value chains
• Exploring a fresh approach to maximising local environmental, social and economic benefit in the South of Scotland, built around the Landscape Enterprise Netwerk (LENs) concept 
• Developing resources that will enable businesses in the agri-food arena to understand their environmental obligations and landscape dependencies 

“This is one of a series of such agreements that the Scottish regulator has struck in recent years - with existing partnerships including the Leven Programme Partnership and the 2050 Climate Group.”

“Nestlé is a key player in the food and drinks sector in Scotland. Around 50 dairy farms in South West Scotland supply milk to its Girvan factory, which, in turn, supplies milk crumb for Nestlé factories in York, Fawdon and Halifax, where KitKat, Aero, Rolo, Quality Street and Yorkie are manufactured.”

The partnership is inherently designed to identify and overcome challenges that can deter the development of circular economy business models. 

Terry A’hearn, SEPA’s CEO, had this to say about the future of SEPA: “To put it bluntly, business as usual won’t tackle the scale and urgency of the climate crisis that humanity faces and SEPA wants to form bold and surprising new partnerships to support the future sustainability of industrial activities across Scotland and drive our green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This collaborative drive to give the future of the world a much greener outlook serves, if nothing else, to at least help businesses, form easier relations with these eco-centric strategies, meeting standards easier, and thus incorporating them amongst various business models. SEPA’s Regulatory Strategy, One Planet Prosperity, “is a visionary blueprint for tackling the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.”