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
Improving access to water and
sanitation in Central America
We launched the WASH Pledge at a WBCSD event in El
Salvador in 2014, after which Nestlé Central America began
the roll-out across Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama to help deliver access to
safe water and adequate sanitation. This involved:
• Raising awareness of the WASH concept and our
commitment to water access and conservation;
• Using the WBCSD self-assessment tool to benchmark
current access to water, sanitation and hygiene in our
workplaces;
• Driving ownership and engagement among all employees;
and
• Extending the Pledge beyond our manufacturing facilities.
WASH in the workplace
The WASH Pledge was displayed in 17 sites (seven Nestlé
factories, one co-manufacturing factory, eight distribution
centres and the Panama head office). The benefits of the
Pledge were communicated to all employees through largescale
meetings and video-conferences, supported by a regional
WASH ambassador and WASH champions at each site.
We used the WBCSD self-assessment tool to examine
access to WASH services among more than 3500 direct
employees. All our factories and some distribution centres
satisfactorily met the Pledge’s compliance level, and
improvement plans were
established in some
instances. And while
performance in the other
facilities was ‘good’, an action
plan was developed to
address issues related to
employee behaviour and
sanitation routines.
WASH across our value chain
At some factories, surveys helped us understand
employees’ access to safe water and adequate sanitation
beyond the factory gates. After such an assessment, the Maggi
factory in Antigua, Guatemala, financed eco-filters to ensure
safe drinking water in workers’ homes, while the Nestlé dairy
factory in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, created a WASH committee
to promote water conservation within the community.
Through a workshop, we encouraged 30 strategic suppliers
to use the self-assessment tool and implement the WASH
commitments in their workplaces. And, in collaboration with
our Factory Agriculture Services team, our WASH champions
in Nicaragua and Panama used the self-assessment tool to
analyse the water, sanitation and hygiene conditions in four
farmers’ houses, informing
future projects to improve our
suppliers’ quality of life and
raise their environmental
performance.
We plan to continue these
activities, and reassess our
workplace WASH services,
during 2016.
Collaborating with expert partners
Our objective
By 2016 – 350 000 beneficiaries in local communities will
have access to water, sanitation or hygiene projects
around our manufacturing facilities and in Farmer
Connect areas.
By the end of 2015, almost 440 000 beneficiaries in local
communities had access to water, sanitation and hygiene
projects around our manufacturing facilities and in Farmer
Connect areas. Having reached our 2016 target early, we have
continued to monitor our performance and will use this
progress to help set a new objective next year.
The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving
the number of people without access to safe drinking water by
2015 has been met, yet the parallel goal to halve the number
of people without access to basic sanitation has not. Access
to sanitation remains a significant challenge for many
countries: an estimated 2.4 billion people still lack adequate
sanitation facilities, contributing to almost 90% of child deaths
from diarrhoeal diseases.
This is not an acceptable situation, and organisations such
as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies (IFRC) are working hard to provide equitable,
affordable and sustainable solutions to improve the health and
quality of life of vulnerable communities.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies
Nestlé became the IFRC’s first corporate partner in Africa in
2002 and, in 2014, we renewed our partnership, committing
CHF 5 million over five years to the organisation. Of our
country offices 16 8 now engage directly with Red Cross/Red
Crescent national societies either to donate blood, provide
products or water to refugees or natural disaster victims, or
roll out WASH initiatives for communities living around the
areas where Nestlé operates.
Over the years of our collaboration, we have increasingly
focused on improving access to clean water, sanitation and
hygiene in rural communities, such as the cocoa-growing
regions of Côte d’Ivoire. Here, a programme of activities was
introduced to improve health and hygiene awareness among
vulnerable groups, including schoolchildren, teachers and
local community members. Around 228 861 people in Côte
d’Ivoire have now benefited from the initiative, which includes
the monitoring and improvement of water quality and water
infrastructure, the provision or renovation of sanitation
facilities, and the raising of awareness through hygiene
awareness programmes in villages and schools.
Our efforts to improve water access and hygiene are also
ongoing in neighbouring Ghana, where improved sanitation is
available to a very small proportion of the population. The
partnership plans to improve access to sustainable WASH
services for 90 000 beneficiaries (84 community and school
sites) over four years in rural areas.
8 Bangladesh, Canada, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Japan, Mexico,
Norway, Panama, the Philippines, Russia, Spain, Thailand and USA.
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