Sustainable development

Becoming carbon neutral is great…

But becoming climate positive is even better!

To achieve our aim of helping create a positive climate, more and more products will be assessed against scenarios
to limit their impact. These will model alternative, more sustainable products.

Packaging weight is already being reduced in order to limit emissions during transportation.

Packaging is being made 100% recyclable thanks to new packaging materials that reduce CO₂ emissions by a whopping 32.6%!

Learning for a better future.

The Yana Product Team calculates the environmental footprint of all of its products via the Ecoinvent database. This allows us to learn how we can optimise our product, from the raw material to the rubbish bin. This learning curve will always continue evolving and will enable further improvements.

The environmental footprint of Vadigran’s 9 Yana grain products is calculated based on Life Cycle Analyses (LCAs). These LCAs are conducted with Ecoinvent 3.5 as the primary environmental database.

The calculations for the individual footprints are done by linking the corresponding environmental impact values (Ecoinvent) to every step in the full life cycle of the 9 grain products. This means that from production through to the products’ waste phase, there is scrutiny of the impact of raw material extraction, transportation, energy consumption and much more.

From environmental data to strategic action points.

Ultimately the total emissions of these 9 products are actually pretty good, because grains are natural products that go through very little processing and barely contain any additives. The LCAs did show that the 9 products’ biggest sticking points with the greatest impact can be found in:

This includes the production of seeds, pits, wheat and oats, and the impact of their farming. For example, fertilisers and/or pesticides are used and agricultural machinery consumes energy. But there are also the greenhouse gas emissions from the use of fossil fuels for production processes, such as seed processing.

production of raw materials

In a lorry or on a boat, for example. Primarily we are concerned with the greenhouse gas emissions produced by long-distance transportation.

Transportation

These 'environmental hotspot' insights therefore show the Yana product team exactly what they need to focus on to be able to reduce their environmental footprint the most:

with a smaller environmental footprint (thanks to more sustainable farming methods or using less intensive raw materials).

Searching for alternative fuels

e.g. by partnering with local suppliers. Another aspect to consider here is reducing the weight of the products and using alternative, more sustainable means of transportation.

Reducing distances of transportation

From climate neutral

TO CLIMATE POSITIVE

Sustainable development is about more than measuring. The Yana Product Team wants to strategically deploy the insights from the LCAs in order to sustainably develop the whole product portfolio.

After the calculations of environmental impact and optimisations to reduce the CO₂ emissions, you are still left with a ‘balance’. We have funded farmers in Belgium and France to adopt new farming practices that have resulted in emission reductions that add up to 110% of this balance. We have done so through a programme established by Soil Capital. We have bundled the carbon certificates generated by these farmers with ICROA-approved Verified Emission Reductions.

Soil Capital exists to enable farmers to transition 1 million hectares of farmland to more profitable, regenerative agriculture by 2025. The result: a healthier environment for crop production. Which is in turn good news for human health! Regenerative farming improves the health of the soil so that CO₂ is no longer emitted but is retained instead.