ethical & sustainable pie-making: the highlights
- romanysimon
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read

Baking Things Better...And Better
When we launched Pies, Planet, People in 2020, we set ourselves nine challenging ethical and sustainable goals to achieve by 2025. Here are some of the highlights, but for the full story check out our most recent Impact Report.
Climate Action: Leading the Charge to Net Zero
We've achieved a 30% reduction in our Scope 1 & 2 operational emissions since our 2019 baseline—a significant step toward our ultimate goal. We've now joined the UN's Race to Zero with a 2040 Net Zero deadline, complete with a comprehensive roadmap showing how we'll get there.
In 2024/25, we installed solar panels on our Bristol Bakery, funded with support from the West of England Combined Mayoral Authority.
Our full Scope 1, 2 & 3 emissions decreased by 12% year-on-year.
Pioneering Sustainable Ingredients
Identity Preserved Palm Oil: We remain 100% committed to deforestation-free, Identity Preserved Palm Oil from Daabon, one of the world's most transparent palm oil producers. This means full traceability to individual plantations and complete supply chain segregation—the highest certification standard available. The impact? Our Identity Preserved palm oil has reduced emissions from 3.61 CO2e per kg (industry average) to just 0.07 CO2e per kg—a remarkable 98% reduction.
We're also 100% committed to deforestation-free soy in all our products.
Uncompromising Animal Welfare
We maintain some of the highest animal welfare standards in the pie sector - we only use:
Free range British chicken, eggs and pork
Wild British venison
British Farm Assured beef
Our second materiality assessment in 2025 confirmed animal welfare remains the top priority for our stakeholders—and we couldn't agree more.
Reducing Environmental Impact Through Lower-Carbon Choices
We've developed 34 non-beef pies over the past five years, and as a result of this our beef CO2e emissions have reduced by 11%. From wild venison to free range chicken and ham, to cheese and plant-based ingredients, the range is diverse and delicious. Take our new Chana Rama pie made using Bold Bean Co. queen chickpeas; it won Best in Class at the British Pie Awards and is our lowest carbon pie yet!
Packaging Innovation
We've achieved 98.7% recyclable packaging and reduced plastic packaging to just 2.21% (down from 8.2% in 2019/20). Since 2019/20, we've saved 51 tonnes of plastic from becoming waste, with 10 tonnes saved when we removed plastic windows from our boxes.
We remain the only pie supplier to not use foil tins or plastic windows in our packaging, and our packaging per pie weighs 25% less than our competitors in supermarkets.
Waste Reduction Success
We've reduced total waste by 29% per pie versus baseline
Only 0.25% of our waste sent to landfill in 24/25
Our 'No Pies in the Bin' taskforce rehomes all edible surplus food
We anaerobically digest remaining food waste to produce biogas for energy
B Corp Certified: Business as a Force for Good
A B Corp since 2021, we have been awarded our B Corp recertification in 2026, with an impressive score of 101.2 points (up from 88.4 in 2021).
We're also a Real Living Wage Employer, ensuring all our employees receive an independently verified minimum income standard.
Community Impact
Since 2020, we've:
Donated 270,113 pies and over £36,000 to charitable causes
Volunteered 1,288 hours supporting local charities including FareShare SouthWest, St Peter's Hospice, Surfers Against Sewage, and many more
Increased our volunteering hours by 222% since implementation of our volunteering scheme
When it comes to being ethical and sustainable, there's still so much more to do - we're not perfect - but we are committed to being transparent, improving bit by bit and leading by example in the food industry.
Want to know more? Visit https://www.pieminister.co.uk/sustainability




