Barry Callebaut leading in corporate action and transparency on deforestation

Submitted by J. Mikhail on Fri, 01/28/2022 - 02:39

CDP’s annual environmental disclosure and scoring process is widely recognized as the gold standard of corporate environmental transparency. In 2021, over 590 investors with over US$110 trillion in assets and 200 major purchasers with US$5.5 trillion in procurement spend requested companies to disclose data on environmental impacts, risks and opportunities through CDP’s platform.

A detailed and independent methodology is used by CDP to assess companies, allocating a score on the comprehensiveness of disclosure, awareness and management of environmental risks and demonstration of best practices associated with environmental leadership, such as setting ambitious and meaningful targets.

This year, a record-breaking 12,000 companies were scored. Through significant demonstrable action to tackle deforestation in our supply chain and source more sustainable commodities, we are one out of 24 companies ranked in the ‘A-List’ by CDP for global forests stewardship. In addition, we received for the fourth consecutive year an “A-” for our carbon reduction efforts.

This is our fourth consecutive year of being recognized as a leader by CDP, which shows tremendous appreciation of our Forever Chocolate progress to make sustainable chocolate the norm by 2025. It is an enormous challenge, but the recognition by CDP is testimony to the dedication of our people, every day, to continue to innovate, scale and remain focussed on our sustainability efforts.

Pablo Perversi, Chief Innovation, Sustainability & Quality Officer; Global Head of Gourmet

Many congratulations to all the companies on this year’s A List. Taking the lead on environmental transparency and action is one of the most important steps businesses can make, even more so in the year of COP26 and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. The scale of the risk to businesses from climate change, water insecurity and deforestation can no longer be ignored, and we know the opportunities of action far outweigh the risks of inaction. Leadership from the private sector is essential for securing global ambitions for a net-zero, nature positive and equitable world. Our A List celebrates those companies who are preparing themselves to excel in the economy of the future by taking action today.

Paul Simpson, CEO of CDP

Carbon reduction and identifying forests with high conservation value: our actions in 2021

By 2025, our goal is to be carbon and forest positive. Our journey to reach this ambition began in 2016 with the launch of Forever Chocolate, our plan to make sustainable chocolate the norm. In fiscal year 2020/21, we continued to scale our actions on carbon reduction and forest protection.

One milestone in our fight against deforestation in 2021, was the development, after four years of work with EcoVision Lab, part of ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland) of a publicly available, industry-first, indicative High Carbon Stock (HCS) map, that identifies forests with high conservation value and areas where deforestation would cause the highest carbon emissions. This new tool is a true breakthrough because it provides a highly automated, transparent, objective tool that generates HCS maps at global scale.

To become carbon positive we have committed to assessing the carbon impact created by our own operations (scope 1), the impact generated by the energy we use (scope 2), and the impact of our entire supply chain (scope 3), which includes the production and processing of all the raw materials we source, and related Land Use Changes (LUC), which forms the biggest part of our carbon liability.

To illustrate, the use of animal feed additives is widely recognized as an effective means of reducing methane emissions in dairy cattle. To establish the most effective method to reduce our emissions, we worked in collaboration with Gold Standard and Agolin to develop a new methodology to quantify and certify carbon insetting for dairy within our chocolate supply chain. By developing this methodology we can also work more closely with our dairy suppliers to produce low carbon milk.

We are very proud to be once again recognized by CDP for our commitment on environmental ambition, action and transparency. A full list of companies that made this year’s CDP A List is available, along with other publicly available company scores.

Find out more about Forever Chocolate

Taryn Ridley

Working as External Affairs Manager in the Corporate Communications team of Barry Callebaut. Native Australian, but loves living in the land of the Toblerone. Passionate about a range of sports, nature and travelling.