We understand that investigating and reducing environmental impact means looking at all stages of a product or process's life from cradle to grave. That is why we use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess environmental impacts, including the carbon footprint of products and processes. This includes the impacts of raw material extraction, processing, manufacture, distribution, use, and disposal or recycling. We believe that by quantifying sustainability information, we can better understand our resource use and impacts and introduce sustainability parameters to support our decision making process.
In Bakery Supplies we are working on carbon footprint reduction in two ways. First, we are developing new processes which make smarter use of natural resources. For example, innovative baking processes enabling longer shelf life reduce impact in several ways. Less bread is wasted, both on our customer and consumer side, and distribution channels are optimized. Second, our operational excellence programs are creating improvements and efficiencies that promote sustainability, such as reducing energy usage, waste and water. In addition, we are lowering our carbon footprint by migrating to more sustainable packaging materials and developing smarter packaging solutions.
For Purac, driving carbon footprint reduction is deeply linked to the business strategy. Purac's products help to reduce CO2 emissions by lowering society's dependency on fossil fuels. Purac's innovation program includes the development of new generation biobased chemicals and the use of lactic acid and succinic acid as potentially important platform chemicals to replace fossil fuel based chemicals. In Purac, our focus is to deliver a reduction in CO2 emissions through both our Poly Lactic Acid (PLA) proposition and its gypsum free technology.
Purac is at the forefront in the development of products, technologies and applications for biobased and biodegradable PLA. We have expanded our capacity through a new 75,000 ton lactides plant in Thailand. As lactide is a precursor for PLA based polymers, this product delivers a more favorable CO2 footprint compared to traditional oil-based polymers. For example, bio-plastics produced based on lactide plant from this plant alone translate to a CO2, reduction of more than 125,000 tons compared to plastics based on Low Density Poly Ethylene (LDPE). Purac also continues to advance its technology to produce lactic acid in a gypsum free process. Purac is preparing to invest in this new process to be able to produce on a substantial scale of 20,000 tons capacity. This would mean a reduction in CO2 emission of 12,000 tons and a reduction of waste.