Apetito won the ‘Best Sustainable Packaging Award’ for its boomerang initiative, which is a recycling scheme for ready meal trays. Plastic trays are collected from sister company Wiltshire Farm Foods’ customers each week and then turned into new trays at the company’s specialist partner facility in Durham.
Apetito also won the ‘Environmental Leadership Award’ for their net zero commitments and their progressive stance on reducing carbon emissions. In July Apetito launched a reduced-carbon menu at St. George's Foundation Hospital.
Lee Sheppard, director of corporate affairs and policy at Apetito, said: “Sustainability is central to everything that we do within our business. It’s important to our customers and is a real passion for everyone who works within our business. We hope our ground-breaking recycling initiative encourages other businesses to follow suit and consider how be given a new life through circular recycling schemes.
“We believe in ‘action now’ and have made a clear and meaningful commitment to reducing our carbon emissions to net zero by 2040 via challenging interim targets for 2025 and 2035. By 2025, we aim to decarbonise in line with Paris Climate Agreement requirements to meet a net zero 1.5 deg C pathway and by 2035, we aim to deliver further substantial decarbonisation. We go far beyond making a simple marketing-led net zero pledge and it’s why we have had our targets independently verified by the SBTi. Our targets are based on solid science rather than marketing greenwash.”
Declan Henderson, Apetito’s category development manager in specialist nutrition was singled out for the FDF’s Rising Star Award.
He commented: “I’m truly honoured to have been recognised with the FDF’s Rising Star Award 2022 and would pay tribute to the whole Specialist Nutrition Team here at Apetito – everyone works tirelessly to conceive and bring to market new products which consistently break new ground in the world of specialist nutrition. Everything we do is designed to make a real difference and we know our specialist nutrition meals can be a life-line.”