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Nestle Sustainability Profile

Enhancing Quality of Life and Contributing to a Healthier Future

We believe in Good Living, Good Communities, and Good Planet. Good Living is our ambition to help 50 million children live healthier lives. Good Communities is helping improve 30 million livelihoods globally in communities directly connected to our business. Good Planet is striving for Zero environmental impact in our operations.

About Nestle

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  • FMCG

Nestle Sustainability Actions

No deforestation

Forests are vital to life. They cover 30% of the earth’s land surface and play a vital role in ecosystems, as carbon sinks and as a source of biodiversity. Forests are also critical for billions of people, including many vulnerable farmers, who rely upon them for their livelihoods. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 7.3 million hectares of forest are lost each year. When forests are cleared, species are driven to extinction, climate change effects worsen, and people’s livelihoods are destroyed – along with the natural ecosystems that we all rely on for the food we eat. We must address deforestation, urgently. Continued progress In 2010, Nestlé committed to ending deforestation in our supply chain by 2020 (pdf, 205Kb). Since 2010, we’ve worked across our supply chains to make no deforestation a reality. We included a No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) requirement into our Responsible Sourcing Standard (pdf, 2Mb), and mapped our supply chains to identify product origins and assess their deforestation risk. While we have made progress, we still face challenges, many of which we will not be able to solve by ourselves. This is why, last month, we joined the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA) Steering Group. As of February 2018, our supply chain is 63% verified deforestation free (pdf, 90Kb) for our top five commodities linked to deforestation risks. We continue to make progress by conducting assessments, sponsoring conservation initiatives, and engaging smallholders. For example, in September we announced that, by the end of the year, we will monitor 100% of our palm oil supply chain using satellite technology. We’ll extend coverage to pulp and paper in 2019 and soya at a later stage. Our ambition is to work throughout our supply chains to transform practices to address deforestation. However, when companies do not comply with our Responsible Sourcing Standard and show no willingness to improve, we will take decisive action to remove them from our supply chain. Challenges remain At each stage of our journey towards no deforestation in our own supply chains, we have encountered new challenges. As we get closer to our 2020 target date, we face some real dilemmas. One of the first challenges we came across in 2010 was a lack of common understanding on how to define forests and deforestation. This is where the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA) comes in. Building on a methodology developed by Greenpeace, The Forest Trust (TFT) and Golden Agri Resources, it distinguishes forest areas to protect, from lands with low carbon and biodiversity value that may be developed sustainably. The approach allows for economic development, but also protects local community rights, community land use and livelihoods through the integration of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) procedures. Nestlé was one of the first companies to include a no conversion of High Carbon Stock lands requirement within our Responsible Sourcing Standard. This has been a critical tool to help us implement our No Deforestation commitment. Other challenges remain. One is how much we should focus upon our own commitment to no deforestation in our value chains, versus broader efforts to eliminate deforestation globally. Another is recognizing that achieving no deforestation is not just about preventing forest clearances, but also social issues – from human rights to the economic development of palm oil-producing communities, 40% of which comprise smallholder farmers. Cutting out smallholders and vulnerable communities to address deforestation more simply and quickly in our direct supply chains would not only harm tens of thousands of livelihoods, it would also increase pressure on forests. By engaging in programs like Rurality we are working to empower smallholder farmers in our supply chains, supporting them them to be more resilient and to produce responsibly. Global consensus is vital Given a lack of global consensus on how we should best respond to these challenges, we see the need for a new way of thinking, and a new platform to build consensus among civil society, producers, end users, and others. This is why we joined the HCSA Steering Group, which is tackling these tough issues head-on. Our ambition is to help make the HCS Approach the norm in forest conservation. We’ll do so by bringing in our experience of working with smallholder farmers in diverse and complex supply chains, and by applying the tools and technologies we all need – to help make deforestation history.

Grown respectfully

Several years ago, Eduardo Camarena thought he had lost everything. He no longer had a job, was going through a divorce, and had to move away from his children. He got so low that "even the sun couldn’t warm me". Shortly afterwards, his grandfather passed away. But Eduardo had one thing left to cling on to. A promise made to his grandfather that he would look after the family’s coffee plantation and make it successful. Today, Eduardo runs a thriving coffee farm, is helping raise his children, and is a source of help and advice to other farmers in the region. How did he turn things around? Respect for our farmers By joining the Nescafé Plan, which over the last decade has helped give farmers like Eduardo across the world the support they need to grow more and better coffee, and to do so sustainably, with benefits for the communities where they live. On International Coffee Day 2018, Nescafé has launched Grown Respectfully to express how it works respectfully to deliver great-tasting coffee, by supporting coffee farmers, their communities and the planet through the Plan. "It was the best decision I could have made in my life," Eduardo says of his decision to join the Nescafé Plan. But before he did so, there was no telling if his coffee plantation would survive. The plants weren’t growing as they should, and his region was hit by drought. He often thought that he’d have to give it all up. Through the Nescafé Plan, Eduardo was one beneficiary from the distribution of 29 million high-yielding, disease-resistant coffee plantlets to farmers in Mexico. This allowed farmers to renovate their plantations, improve quality and increase productivity levels on plantations by up to 81%. He was also one of 390 coffee farmers who took part in a course run by Nescafé and the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, which gave them knowledge, help and advice on running their businesses. Eduardo returned to his coffee estate eager to apply his new knowledge, on everything from improving the coffee crop to improving farm economics. Respect for our communities If Eduardo’s experience reflects Grown Respectfully by showing how farmers can benefit from the Nescafé Plan, its positive community impact is also evident across our 17 countries where the Plan is active. For example, in Kenya, 6,000 women have benefited from a Women’s Empowerment Program, with some promoted to leadership roles in cooperatives as a result. A Nescafé partnership with another coffee brand, Zoegas, provided over 300 coffee farming families with better access to safe drinking water. In India, Nescafé provided access to free medical diagnoses and care for more than 1300 farmers, farm workers and their family members. And in Vietnam, Nescafé enabled its farmers to increase their incomes by 30% by adopting better agronomic practices. Respect for our planet Under the Plan, Nescafé is also ensuring that, while growing better coffee, farmers are applying new techniques to protect and conserve natural resources for future generations. In Colombia, for example, Nescafé has worked closely with over 2600 coffee farmers to ensure more efficient use of water, wastewater treatment and reforestation. It has also run training activities to raise community awareness on sustainable water use. The brand has also protected more than 200 natural water springs on coffee farms in Brazil, planted 70,000 native trees and installed nearly 100 wastewater-cleaning systems on farms, to avoid contaminating rivers and streams. All these local actions support Nescafé’s 2020 public objectives, which include – responsible sourcing for 70% of all Nescafé coffee, distributing 220 million coffee plantlets, better coffee economics and labour rights, and sustainable factory operations. Grown Respectfully reflects how Nescafé contributes to Nestlé’s broader company purpose of enhancing quality of life and contributing to a healthier future – for individuals and families, for our communities and for the planet. armers like Eduardo have benefited from the Nescafé Plan through being able to grow better crops, manage their finances effectively and to help other farmers. These things have helped inspire his own, personal transformation. "I became a better human being, a better parent," Eduardo says. "Now I can be close to my children, to raise them, and, most importantly, I can keep the promise I made to my grandfather."

The quest for better packaging

How many pieces of packaging do you recycle every year? You may have no idea, but there are few more important questions for the future of our planet. From the oceans to the deserts, the world depends on our ability to reduce, reuse and recycle our waste. It depends on our ability to create a world in the very near future where every single piece of packaging is recyclable or reusable. And it depends on our ability to create a world where rubbish isn’t sent to landfill, but is turned into something new. “Plastic waste is one of the biggest sustainability issues the world is facing today” Mark Schneider, Nestlé CEO Those could be the words of an environmental campaigner. In fact, they are from Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider when making a new commitment to improving the environmental performance of packaging, aimed at cutting pollution from plastic packaging waste. The global announcement represents the start of a new phase in Nestlé’s work on packaging. Nestlé’s ambition is that 100% of our packaging is recyclable or reusable by 2025. Up to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans, rivers and waterways every year. And although plastic packaging is vital for keeping food safe and fresh, there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure less is used, what is used is fully recyclable and that recycling systems are available around the world. The packaging of the future Doing his part to help protect the environment is motivation for Xavier Caro as he works to develop new packaging materials at Nestlé’s Product Technology Centre in Germany. He has dedicated his career to making more environmentally-friendly packaging. His starting point is to question whether packaging for a product is absolutely necessary. If the answer is yes, Xavier then looks at all of the options for reusing and/or recycling. In his laboratory he meticulously peels back the three layers of a powdered soup packet, assessing the need for the inner layer of plastic, alongside the aluminium foil and the outer plastic laminate. However, most packaging cannot be avoided altogether. It is essential to protect food from damage, germs or pests when being transported. And the packaging also carries important information about the food’s ingredients and nutritional value. New technologies and innovations are making a wider choice of packaging materials and more environmentally friendly formats available. Each time a new prototype for packaging is made, it is tested to see how easy and convenient it is for customers to use and store. But, at the end of the day, if its environmental performance is not better than the original version, it will be not be used. Xavier will return to the drawing board in his quest to make something better. Transforming the plastics economy Developing new packaging that is environmentally friendly and fully recyclable is only part of Xavier’s challenge. “It’s not good enough just to design the pack and make it recyclable,” he says. “It is important to establish how this packaging will be collected and recycled too.” In Europe that is a relatively straightforward process, he explains, because companies can work alongside established recycling schemes. But in less developed countries the company needs to work with local partners to ensure recycling is a reality as well as a mere possibility. Single-serve product packaging makes up a large portion of plastic waste in the environment. It’s an issue that companies like Nestlé are working to address. The company is a participant in the New Plastics Economy, which advises developing countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines where marine litter is a significant problem. The initiative, led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, aims to rethink the future of plastics by applying the principles of the circular economy. It brings together key stakeholders to rethink and redesign the future of plastics, starting with packaging. Around the world, people like Nestlé’s Xavier Caro are taking up that challenge. They are working to make sure our food is packaged in a way that keeps it safe and meets human needs – and ensures the natural world and the animals that live in it are not harmed by waste plastic.

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Nestle Sustainability Commitments

2020

Zero Waste

Nestlé objective: zero waste in its sites by 2020

2025

Packaging

Nestlé’s ambition is that 100% of our packaging is recyclable or reusable by 2025.

2050

Zero Net Emissions

We are committed to zero net emissions by 2050

Nestle Sustainability News

Focusing on regenerative agriculture and moving to renewable electricity, Nestlé redoubles efforts to combat climate change

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Aussies encouraged to ‘Give the Planet a Break’ by recycling correctly

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This information references https://www.nestle.com.au/en/our-purpose, https://www.nestle.com.au/en/stories and was sourced on 19/11/2020. Is this your business? Suggest an edit