AMPC’s 2024 Environmental Performance Review (EPR) for the red meat processing industry begins in August. The EPR is the flagship sustainability report for the Australian red meat processing industry, and has reported on this for more than 25 years.
The AMPC Strategic Plan has strong goals around processor sustainability, and the EPR is the cornerstone reporting project to help achieve improvement.
AMPC Program Manager Sustainability Matthew Deegan said, “The EPR is helping processors build trust with their communities and stakeholders through transparency concerning the environment.
“The EPR allows processors to compare themselves against industry environmental performance and to develop on-site environmental improvement strategies.”
The most recent EPR in 2022 achieved a 60 per cent voluntary participation rate across the red meat processing industry. This year’s EPR aims to expand this level of voluntary participation even further, to surpass the global sustainability reporting participation rate for the food and beverage sector of 73 per cent.
As part of the project, individual participants will be eligible for their own plant environmental benchmarking workshop, and confidential solutions report. All data is aggregated and de-identified as part of the final published report.
For the first time, the EPR will cover impacts under the new Australian compliance regulations as part of the Australian Sustainability Reporting Standard (ASRS). It will also invite participants to voluntarily submit their best practice environmental case studies, which AMPC can use to raise the profile of processors who are leading sustainability efforts.
AMPC has commissioned CSIRO to perform the review.
CSIRO Principal Research Scientist Brad Ridoutt said, “This year the survey instrument is being streamlined to make it easier for processors to complete.
“There will be a greater focus on understanding trends in product range and processes adopted to help interpret the environmental performance metrics.”
“An extra question will assess implication of emerging climate-related financial disclosure legislation.”
The confidential survey will be distributed to processors in August 2024. The estimated time to complete the survey (not including assembly of information) is 45 minutes. If required, participants will then be contacted by telephone to get any extra information. The first 35 processors to complete the survey will receive the energy and water benchmarking workshop session and an ASRS readiness test.
To learn more about the Environmental Performance Review and how you can be involved contact AMPC Program Manager Sustainability Matthew Deegan at m.deegan@ampc.com.au