Nestlé in society Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015

Nestlé in society:
Creating Shared Value
Nutrition, health
and wellness
Rural development
Water
Environmental
sustainability
Human rights
and compliance
Our
people
G4-EC7, Procurement practices G4-DMA, Supplier environmental assessment G4-DMA, G4-EN33, Supplier assessment for labor practices G4-DMA, G4-LA15, Child labor G4-DMA,
Indigenous rights G4-DMA, G4-HR8, G4-HR9, Supplier human rights assessment G4-DMA, G4-HR10, G4-HR11, G4-SO2, Supplier assessment for impacts on society G4-DMA, G4-SO9, G4-SO10
Our partner Proforest has carried out a number of
assessments for sugar and soya that have identified ways of
helping farmers implement best practices and take remedial
actions to correct issues.
Forced labour, safety and other social issues also occur in
palm oil production, and there are further labour concerns in
the fish and seafood supply chain. We are fully committed to
ensuring that our products are not associated with forced
labour through our mandatory Nestlé Supplier Code and RSG,
which requires all of our suppliers to respect human rights and
to comply with all applicable labour laws. In the case of fish
and seafood, we are, for example, engaging with our suppliers
in Thailand to identify any potential unlawful labour practices
and pursue appropriate actions to eliminate such practices
from our supply chain, as well as working alongside the Thai
Government and the ILO.
Read more about Nestlé’s position on this issue in the
Nestlé Commitment on Labour Rights in Agricultural
Supply Chains.
Child labour
Child labour has been identified as an issue in our hazelnut,
vanilla and cocoa supply chains. We are committed to
eliminating child labour from all our supply chains. Read more
about how Nestlé is tackling this issue in Human rights and
compliance.
Gender inequality
Gender inequality and discrimination remain widespread, and
the contribution – both direct and indirect – of women in the
supply chain often goes unrecognised, unrewarded and
unrecorded. In our cocoa supply chain, for example, they
perform many tasks, from planting seedlings and collecting
cocoa pods to transporting, fermenting and drying the cocoa,
but men often take responsibility for selling the cocoa, and the
distribution of any financial compensation. And even when
they combine this income with additional activities, such as
growing other food crops, most women struggle to earn
enough to maintain an acceptable standard of living.
Other barriers facing women include communities
recognising male-only land ownership, the near-absence of
women in leadership or managerial roles in cocoa cooperatives,
and a lack of health and safety awareness and
access to training and protective equipment. Our Action Plan
on Women in the Cocoa Supply Chain sets out to address
these issues.
Deforestation
Deforestation is a major environmental issue that has long
been associated with the palm oil, pulp and paper, and soya
supply chains in particular, and also affects sugar production.
Poor forest management and the loss of High Conservation
Value (HCV) areas still remain a challenge. Rising consumer
demand means tropical rainforests and associated peatlands
have been cleared to make way for plantations, which
contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion, water
pollution and a loss of biodiversity; working conditions and
land conflicts over tenure rights are also an issue. Many NGOs
actively campaign against unsustainable practices.
In 2010, Nestlé made a ‘no deforestation’ commitment,
stating that all of its products, globally, will not be associated
with deforestation by 2020 (Nestlé also supports the
Consumer Goods Forum’s ambition for zero net deforestation
by 2020). This commitment was the first of its kind by a food
company, and covers all the raw materials we use to make our
foods and beverages, as well as our packaging, making
traceability and transparency crucial. A significant number of
traders and manufacturers have since followed our lead and
developed sustainable palm oil policies and ‘no deforestation’
commitments of their own. Within the soya supply chain, we
work with Proforest to identify, categorise and maintain highrisk
zones. In the Cerrado area of Brazil, for example, we only
source products from land that has not been converted from
HCV areas to other land use.
We are also developing and sharing tools to enable
smallholder farmers to avoid deforestation and the loss of
natural vegetation, and finding ways to help them minimise
water consumption. In the sugar supply chain, for instance,
remediation activities are implemented in conjunction with a
network of local delivery partners in specific countries, who
can bring additional local knowledge to the process.
Land acquisition: respecting the rights of local and
indigenous peoples
Land tenure is one of the eight key areas that are included in
our Rural Development Framework and we are gathering data
and insights on the status of farmers’ property rights.
Secure rights to land and natural resources are essential to
rural development. They help to reduce uncertainties and
facilitate long-term investment; in contrast, insecure land
rights lead to poverty, land degradation and forest conversion.
Our efforts to improve land rights were recognised when we
were awarded the industry-leading score for this category in
Oxfam’s 2015 Behind the Brand rankings.
Nestlé does not directly acquire or lease agricultural land,
though we do acquire land for factory sites and a small number
of demonstration farms. However, we do buy ingredients such
as palm oil, soya and sugar, which are some of the common
raw materials driving land acquisition and ‘land grabbing’.
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