21 September 2010

2 minute read

Oceania

The Environment Conference at WDS2010 in New Zealand, will focus on four major sustainability issues facing the global dairy industry:

• Climate change,
• Carbon foot-printing,
• Water use and disposal, and
• Waste reduction/recycling.

The first session will look at the science behind climate change policy with input from one of New Zealand’s leading climate change scientists and New Zealand’s representative on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The work undertaken as part of the Global Dairy Agenda for Action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be presented. The Conference will also include information on the important area of combining both the climate impact of foods and the importance of foods as a nutrient source.

The second session will focus on IDF work over the last 12 months to develop a carbon footprint methodology so that different dairy products and dairy products of different country of origin can be compared. Whether or not carbon sequestration is a benefit to the dairy industry in reducing its carbon footprint and the issues around measurement and usefulness of carbon sequestration will be discussed.

Having dealt with carbon footprints the dairy industry now faces further issues in the future. The most pressing of these is the use and disposal of water and this will be the theme of the third session. The conference will highlight the current status of water footprint methodology and will then invite delegates to determine what the on-going water footprint methodology for dairy products should be.

The final session highlights what can be achieved to reduce waste within the dairy industry. Speakers will show how waste will be reduced and explore efforts to find uses, either within the dairy industry or another industry, for materials that were formerly waste products.

For more details and the full conference programme, visit the events website at http://www.wds2010.com/.  

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