Embracing #GenerationRestoration in the Cold Chain

The theme of this year’s World Environment Day – Generation Restoration – is one everyone in the cold chain can get behind, and here’s why.??

Rising Food Insecurity?

Due to rising food insecurity and according to the latest Global Report on Food Crisis (GRFC), almost 282 million people across 59 countries and territories experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2023. This is a worldwide increase of 24 million from the previous year (2022).??

The solution, however, isn’t to use more land to grow more food. In fact, trying to meet food demands this way would lead to the degradation of 1.6 billion hectares of land, according to a previous U.N. Report.? What’s more, with groundwater reserves in short supply, farmers may struggle to grow more food even if they had access to limitless land, while worsening water stress which is already at an all-time high. As such, any attempts to increase the volume of food in production may only worsen our environmental issues.?

At Lineage we believe that solving food waste and the food insecurity crisis goes hand-in-hand. This is where the cold chain comes in.??

Keeping food fresh?

Lineage sees the power of Frozen. While the process of growing food to be frozen may not be something everyone thinks about, it plays a major role, alongside fresh produce, in feeding the world as well as protecting the environment. For instance, it prevents unnecessary waste by stopping safe, quality food – which could be directed towards individuals in need – from reaching the landfill. It achieves this through cutting-edge technology which keeps food fresh and long lasting. Unlike some other industrial facilities, which require constant electricity supplies, some modern cold-storage facilities can be cooled intermittently. This is made possible by using advanced temperature-controlled systems, connected to weather forecast databases and grid operators, to cool facilities by an extra few degrees when renewable energy is plentiful and shut down the cooling systems for hours or days as required when grids become overloaded. In effect, this means that cold storage acts like a thermal battery, becoming a buffer in the middle of the energy grid.?

At Lineage, we also have solar installations, along with many other energy initiatives to help reduce our carbon footprint. For example, like at our award-winning UK facility Bellshill, Vlissingen in the Netherlands and our fully-automated Cool Port II facility in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.?

Working together for change?

We have a shared purpose at Lineage; we are transforming the food supply chain to eliminate waste and help feed the world. To support this process, we continue to assess the efficiency of our facilities and we’ve already signed up to The Climate Pledge and jumped on board with the ‘Join the Move to –15 C’ initiative.? Because of this, working at Lineage isn’t just a job – it's an opportunity to innovate and put your mark on how food moves from the farm to fork around the world. But we can't do it alone.?

This World Environment Day, I’m calling on my peers in the cold chain to make sustainability a priority in everything we do. By working on many little things, we can become an integral part of the restoration generation and make a real difference to climate action while helping provide food for the world.