OUR STATUS IN 2008:
The pint/500 ml containers used for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream at all of our production sites did not carry any third party certification in 2008.

Plans
We worked with our packaging suppliers in 2008 to complete the audit process required to achieve FSC certification. We will begin to purchase FSC-certified paperboard for our U.S. pint containers in the first quarter of 2009 and expect to phase them in for all U.S. production by the end of 2009.

We are studying the feasibility and evaluating plans for converting our Canadian pint package and European 500 ml package to FSC-certified paperboard.

OUR STATUS IN 2008:

United States
Ben & Jerry’s has been collecting data on — and actively seeking to reduce — our climate impacts for many years. We have measured the carbon dioxide emissions associated with our Vermont manufacturing plants (which represent more than 80% of our total U.S. production) since 2001, and we have purchased offsets for all of these emissions annually since 2002. We also purchased carbon offsets for all employee air travel in 2008 for the third year in a row. In 2008, Ben & Jerry’s Vermont manufacturing emissions and employee air travel totaled 5,452 tons of CO2, which we offset through NativeEnergy, a nationally recognized provider of high quality carbon offsets.

In the United States, in order to better understand our climate impacts, we are in the middle of a project to complete a carbon inventory of our Company’s activities. We are working with carbon offset provider NativeEnergy to assist us in completing this inventory. We are using the widely accepted guidelines of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol developed by the World Resources Institute/World Business Council for Sustainable Development to measure Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions associated with production at our two Vermont manufacturing plants, which represent more than 80% of our total U.S. production; the transport emissions associated with the ingredients we buy, from the suppliers’ shipping dock to Ben & Jerry’s; the emissions associated with the dairy farming operations that supply our milk and cream; and the emissions associated with the refrigeration and distribution of our products to retailers’ warehouses where Ben & Jerry’s relinquishes ownership. Ben & Jerry’s products made in other Unilever plants in the U.S., representing less than 20% of our total production, are outside the scope of our current inventory. Preliminary results indicate that our primary climate impacts come from dairy farm operations and distribution. Additional information on Ben & Jerry’s emissions and offsets is available here.

Europe
In Europe, Ben & Jerry’s has partnered with a consortium of 40 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the Netherlands known as the HIER Campaign to complete a full carbon life-cycle analysis (LCA) of Ben & Jerry’s greenhouse gas emissions from ‘cow to cone.’ The scope of the analysis includes the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of raw materials, manufacturing operations in our plant in Hellendoorn in the Netherlands, distribution, and end use. The project also included extensive consulting with the environmental engineering organization Ecofys and the Dutch Nature Conservancy to develop a detailed greenhouse gas reduction plan for our European business, which Ben & Jerry’s signed a contract to implement over five years from 2007-2011. We hired a Sustainability Manager for the Hellendoorn plant to manage the improvement projects within the factory.

Based on this analysis and the reduction plan and our Company’s pledge to purchase Gold Standard carbon offsets for unavoidable emissions through 2011, Ben & Jerry’s European business received HIER’s ‘Climate Neutral’ certification in May 2007. In 2008, we offset 26,600 tons of CO2 equivalents (based on a calculation of 1.03kg CO2 per 500ml of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and covering emissions from the period from May 1 through December 31, 2007) through provider South Pole Carbon Asset Management. Additional data on Ben & Jerry’s European climate impacts can be found in the background section of this report or on our European website.

Plans:
Going forward, Ben & Jerry’s is committed to continued efficiency improvements in our U.S. plants and purchasing carbon offsets for all of the manufacturing emissions in our Vermont plants and employee air travel, as we have done since 2002. Our intention is to use the information from our carbon inventory study to determine additional future steps, which may include a lifecycle analysis of specific ingredients, efforts to influence changes on dairy farms regarding carbon emissions, and efforts to reduce emissions associated with distribution.

In Europe, we are committed to maintaining our Climate Neutral status as certified by HIER through the completion of our emissions reduction plan, additional efficiency improvements in our manufacturing operations, increased use of renewable energy and the purchase of Gold Standard VER carbon offsets.

In the United States, Ben & Jerry’s is also involved in a project to seek Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approval of alternative hydrocarbon (HC) refrigerant gases that could reduce the climate impacts of our Company’s freezers and pave the way for wider acceptance of this technology. HC freezers have already been approved and widely deployed in Europe, as they are more energy-efficient than the previous generation of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) freezers — and they eliminate HFCs, which are a potent greenhouse gas. With support from our parent company, Unilever, we introduced fifty Ben & Jerry’s branded HC freezers in the United States in a pilot project while we seek EPA approval. If and when EPA approval is granted, we believe HC technology can significantly reduce the climate impacts of refrigeration in the United States.