SCC Bags Top Environmental Award

South Caernarfon Creameries is pleased to have achieved the Welsh Green Dragon Environmental Standard

South Caernarfon Creameries is pleased to have achieved Level Three of the Welsh Green Dragon Environmental standard after a year of significant improvement in its campaign to reduce its carbon footprint.

The Company has achieved major reductions in its use of electricity, water and oil as well as cutting waste and ensuring that much of the waste that is produced is turned into energy.

Company Secretary Elwyn Jones heads SCC’s drive to save the planet by every means possible from buying new, more energy efficient lorries for its milk tanker fleet to reducing the amount of cheese that hits the floor during production and packaging. He said: “We decided a few years ago that as a Welsh Company we needed to buy into the Green Dragon standards and aim to improve our environmental standards. We operate in one of the most beautiful parts of the country in an industry that is based on dairy farming and what could be more natural than cows turning grass into milk. At the same time making high quality cheese in commercial qualities and to high standards uses lots of resources in terms of power and water. We are a big and complex company and we have to look at energy use, electricity and water continually, and how we can use less of them at a time when the business is expanding.”

SCC currently produces circa 15,000 tons of cheese a year and uses over six million kilowatt hours of electricity, almost 150 million litres of milk, 1.5 million litres of boiler oil and 170,000 tons of water, enough to fill 68 Olympic swimming pools! The past 12 months as seen reductions of 7% in electricity, 9% boiler oil and 8.5% in water and the Company is 13% ahead of its energy reduction targets.

Elwyn Jones added: “We’re not resting on our laurels now that we’ve reached Level Three on the Green Dragon scale. We are now committed to achieving Level Four in 2021 and the top level of Five is our ultimate aim while at the same time growing the business, and providing more local employment as well as a market for our farmer members.”