2Sustain

For a decade now, consumers have been calling on chocolate companies to take more responsibility for transparency in the cocoa bean supply chain.  Late last month, the Hershey Company announced that it is doing just that, as it assumes a leadership role in this area and extends its commitment to drive the long-term change that’s needed.

As previously pledged, Hershey has begun to reinforce its cocoa sustainability efforts by accelerating farmer and family development in West Africa, where 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is grown.

In a press release, the company outlined its plans to: (more…)

PepsiCo UK and Ireland has released its second environmental sustainability report and announced several ambitious goals aimed at minimizing the company’s environmental impact. It’s obvious that PepsiCo UK recognizes the business impact of sustainability initiatives, and over the next few years, the company will be working towards furthering its commitment to sustainability in significant ways.

For example, PepsiCo UK says it plans to be completely fossil fuel-free by 2023.

As it stands now, one fifth of the company’s electricity is sourced from renewable sources. But PepsiCo UK wants to do even better. According to the report: (more…)

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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PepsiCo UK and Ireland has published its first sustainable farming report, which outlines the company’s commitment to reduce the environmental impact of its agricultural processes.

After all, as the parent company of Walkers, Quaker, Tropicana and Copella, PepsiCo is a major buyer of potatoes, oats and fruit. In fact, PepsiCo is the largest purchaser of British potatoes and also one of the UK’s largest buyers of British oats and apples.

In its sustainability farming report, PepsiCo pledges to cut carbon emissions and water usage across the farming of these core crops in the UK by 50 percent over the next five years. (more…)

I was invited to speak at the Forbes Ethisphere Conference in New York last week – an intimate “roundtable” style conference hosted by Steve Forbes and Forbes Magazine. The event was focused on business ethics, CSR and sustainability and attracted CEOs and senior executives from a wide array of companies ranging from Waste Management and Kelloggs to Pepsi and Mattel. I spoke about sustainable supply chains, and in particular the trends we’re witnessing around large enterprises using their leverage to enforce compliance, ethical and social responsibility standards upstream to their suppliers.

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