The story of our climate positive journey
In 2019 we announced our ambition to become climate positive before 2050 as part of our purpose.
With the climate crisis highlighting the urgent need to accelerate action, we’re proud to be on this journey and to be working with our teams, our customers, our suppliers and partners to help realise this bold ambition.
What does climate positive mean?
Put simply, climate positive means removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than we put in. It’s an incredibly bold ambition but one which is needed given the urgency of tackling climate change. This ambition aligns closely to our goal to show our love for nature in everything we do.
How will we achieve climate positivity?
We will tackle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions both in our operations and in our supply chain. The emissions we will tackle fall under categories known as scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3.
- Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from sources we own or control. For example, our factories and offices.
- Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy.
- Scope 3 emissions are all indirect emissions (not included in scope 2) that occur in the value chain of our Company. These can range from how our ingredients are grown to how our products are used.
As we do this, we’ll make important changes to our business. These include:
- Looking at how we formulate, how we continue to innovate and how we continuously improve our ingredients portfolio to reduce the impact of our products.
- Rethinking how we get around; from the way we transport materials and goods, to the way we travel ourselves.
- Moving away from fossil fuels towards renewable electricity sources such as solar, wind, and geothermic energy and renewable energy sources such as biomass.
- Exploring carbon storage solutions – for example through tree planting programmes, like our work with the Givaudan Foundation where we’ve already planted more than 500,000 trees – and restoration of ecosystems.
What are we doing already?
We have also made great progress on our renewable electricity commitments. We are on track to meet our target of converting our entire electricity supply to fully renewable sources by 2025 as part of our RE100 commitment, achieving 90% renewable electricity in 2022.
We actively encourage our teams to reduce the GHG emissions of their daily commute, through a range of schemes including a bike-to-work initiative at our Swiss sites, carpooling through our intranet platform and by providing recharge stations to make the transition to electric cars possible at some sites.
We continue to participate in the annual Climate Change CDP questionnaire for investors as well as in the Climate Change supply chain questionnaire at the request of a number of customers. This allows us to showcase our efforts to reduce GHG emissions and also provides a basis of comparison against other companies. Our CDP score last year was an A (on a scale of A to D, with A being the highest) for GHG emissions, at the leadership level once again.
Last year, we also took decisive actions to help us move towards our goals. We strengthened our targets, now aiming to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 70% between 2015 and 2030, up from a previous target of a 30% reduction.
We’re part of a consortium of 16 partners participating in HyCool, an innovative energy technology project funded by the European Union whose aim is to develop cost-effective solutions using solar heat for industrial purposes. Our flagship site in Sant Celoni, Spain was selected as the original HyCool project test site.
In September 2020 we signed up to the CLG Europe CEO letter to the EU on 2030 GHG emissions targets. The letter is designed to send a clear signal to policymakers and other businesses at a critical policy moment that it is essential to ramp up climate ambition. We have also signed the Business for Nature ‘Nature is everyone’s business’ call-to-action. The call-to-action brings together more than 500 companies with combined revenue of USD 4 trillion and urges governments to adopt policies now to reverse nature loss in this decade.
Who are we working with to realise this ambition?
An ambition this big requires a truly collective effort. It means working closely with our teams, with our customers, with our suppliers, with our partners and all of our stakeholders to make this happen.