The conclusion of the COP28 summit in Dubai has underscored the importance of businesses stepping up and taking action on nature and climate change. The food system contributes a third of all human-caused emissions, so the onus is on those of us in the sector to be the drivers of change.
This is a responsibility we take very seriously at Nestlé, and it’s why we introduced ambitious targets to reduce emissions across our entire value chain back in 2020, and we're working hard across all areas of the business to achieve them.
Whilst challenging, we continue to make good progress towards our targets and there is a lot we can be proud of.
Some highlights of 2023
In the Summer, we delivered a first of its kind rail container to Tesco, which allows us to double-stack pallets and transport twice the amount of product. According to the Rail Delivery Group, each freight train has the potential to take up to 76 heavy goods vehicles off the roads.
When it comes to packaging, we’re constantly innovating to ensure as close to 100% of our packaging is designed for recycling by 2025, and that ultimately all of our packaging is recyclable or reusable. A highlight this year was Nescafé introducing the first instant coffee refill pouch for Nescafé Gold Blend and Nescafé Original.
We also invested £7m in a breakthrough recycling plant to process hard-to-recycle flexible plastics, such as KitKat wrappers, Purina pet food pouches, Rowntree confectionery sharing bags and Nestlé cereal bags. The site will be able to process more than 25,000 tonnes of flexible plastic each year – more than the total amount our business places onto the market.
Finding new ways of preventing waste or finding new purposes for what might previously ended up as waste has also been a theme this year. In September, we announced a two-year trial to assess whether cocoa shells from our confectionery site in York could be used to create a low carbon fertiliser.
Our focus on farming
More than two thirds of Nestlé’s carbon footprint comes from the ingredients which make up our products so we’re aiming to source 20% of our key ingredients through regenerative agriculture methods by 2025. This means working with our agricultural supply chain to incentivise methods that improve soil health, that maintain and restore diverse ecosystems and that safeguard water resources.
We celebrated the 20th anniversary of our partnership with First Milk this year which sees us working closely with dairy farmers in Cumbria and Ayrshire who produce the fresh milk we use in our beverages and confectionery. We have a shared goal to lessen the impact on the environment and contribute positively to the community. The partnership continues to go from strength to strength.
As does the Landscape Enterprise Network (LENs) programme which we helped to develop with 3Keel. Over the course of this year, the programme has doubled in scale again. It is now supporting and partnering with more than 120 farmers, who supply into our Purina and Cereals businesses, to regenerate more than 20,000 hectares of British farmland.
Glancing back to look forward
When looking back over the year, the one thing I see that unites all these great initiatives is partnership.
We know that we can’t achieve our ambitious goals by working alone, but we also know that the size and scale we have as a business gives us a unique opportunity to bring people together to share ideas, to collaborate and innovate to find new ways of doing more, quicker.
Climate change is happening faster than predicted, nature is rapidly being depleted and water is increasingly becoming a risk – both where there’s too much and too little. That’s why we must continue to take decisive action and work ever more closely with our partners, our suppliers, our stakeholders and ultimately our consumers.
So, as we look back on 2023 with pride at the progress we’ve made, we also look ahead with a renewed purpose and ambition, knowing there is more, much more, we can and will do.
