2Sustain

Danone, Unilever, Heinz and Nestlé are the most sustainable large food producers in the world, according to new research released earlier this month by Bank Sarasin.

The study, Food and sustainability: Will the seed bear fruit? highlights three central sustainability themes that affect food producers:

• health and nutrition
• sourcing more raw materials from sustainable agriculture
• committing to fair working conditions.

And although the report found that many large food producers are developing sustainability strategies, Bank Sarasin concluded that most companies still have plenty of ground to cover on the path towards sustainability.

For example, the food industry as a whole faces significant challenges regarding the procurement of raw materials from sustainable sources. The world’s largest food producers purchase a significant share of global harvests –up to 20 percent of the world’s coffee, more than 10 percent of its tea, tomatoes and peas, and about 5 percent of its palm oil. Companies that have worked to secure large volumes of their raw materials from sustainable sources ranked high on Bank Sarasin’s matrix of sustainability criteria.
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Last Wednesday, a day after Greenpeace released a new report airing fresh allegations that the Indonesian paper firm Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is “wreaking environmental havoc” in rainforests and peatlands, French retail giant Carrefour announced that it has suspended sourcing of APP products.

APP is part of the Sinar Mas group, and the Greenpeace report, titled How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet, maintains that the paper company is destroying Indonesia’s rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands so that it can feed its Sumatran based pulp mills, which then export pulp and paper products to a variety retailers worldwide. (more…)

Two Tomorrows, an international sustainability consultancy, rated the sustainability efforts of the world’s 10 largest companies in the  food and beverage sector, and Unilever came out on top.

The new Tomorrow’s Value Rating has Unilever in first place, Nestle in second and Danone in third. Rivals Pepsi and Coca-Cola are in fourth and fifth places respectively.

The complete results are available here. (more…)

Following a detailed review of its palm oil supply chain, Nestle announced yesterday that it is committed to using only Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) by 2015, when sufficient quantities are expected to be available.

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