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Environmental Resilience for F&B: Reducing Risk and Securing Operations

2 min read

Companies are learning the importance of measuring and reducing their impact on the environment for the environment's sake, but few recognise the risks created by their own contributions to environmental changes on their and other’s business. Emissions, water use, and waste don’t just affect the planet, they shape risks to your reputation, bottom line, and operations too. 

Sometimes it’s direct: over-extracting groundwater for irrigation can deplete reservoirs and increase soil salinity. Other times, it’s indirect: a neighbouring farm might use all the groundwater, or extreme weather can disrupt your operations. Even the most sustainable farmer is exposed to floods, droughts, or other climate hazards. This is exposure risk - the risk of your bottom line being affected by environmental changes.

There is another risk that’s less obvious: contribution risk. This isn’t primarily about whether you are affected by environmental changes, but how much you contribute to them. Companies that don’t measure their impacts can be blind to the risks their actions create. 

Contribution risk can show up in different ways. Contribution risk can take several forms: 

  • Legal risks: Governments can restrict practices that cause harm, which may reduce output or lead to fines. For example, limits on water use for irrigation protect soil health but may lower crop yields in the short term. Restrictions on fertiliser use protect nearby water systems but can affect production. 
  • Reputational risks: Companies sourcing ingredients linked to high-impact practices, like deforestation, overfishing, or water-intensive crops, can face public scrutiny or pressure from customers.

In food and beverage, common examples include using beef from regions with high deforestation rates, palm oil from unsustainable plantations, or crops grown in water-stressed areas. Even if these ingredients are just a small part of a product, they can carry significant contribution risk. Measuring and understanding this helps companies make smarter decisions about sourcing, reformulation, and supplier selection before the risk becomes a problem.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) helps with both. By looking at the impacts a product causes over its full lifecycle, LCA can reveal where your supply chain creates environmental harm you otherwise might not notice and where your operations depend on critical resources. Using comprehensive methods like the EU’s Product Environmental Footprint (PEF), you can track multiple impact categories.

Sustained Risk combines LCA with risk maps, such as areas prone to droughts or floods or maps of biodiversity significance, to show both contribution and exposure risk. This helps you understand not only the environmental footprint of your products, but also how vulnerable your business is to environmental changes.

For F&B companies, measuring both sides (what you contribute and what you are exposed to) provides a clearer picture of the risks your business faces. It also highlights opportunities: improving water efficiency, restoring ecosystems, or choosing ingredients that reduce your footprint can reduce costs and protect your operations in the long term.