2025 Chocolate Sustainability Targets
06 Feb 2017 | Barry Callebaut
Throwing wires at the ISM in Cologne and I'm here with Peter Bone from Barry Calibot and Barry Calibot are highlighting the Forever Chocolate program.
I'm here.
Peter, what, what is Forever Chocolate and what are some of the targets that you have in mind?
Chocolate speaks for itself.
We want to have chocolate forever, but therefore we have said we need to be clearer on our ambitions, on our commitments towards 2025.
The first commitment is to eradicate child labor out of our supply chain by 2025.
Big objective, but we cannot go around that.
We need to achieve that.
The second commitment is to pull 500,000 cobalt farmers out of poverty by 2025.
We know that that will also help us to drive child labor out of the supply chain, but of course we will create the thriving kind of communities we need.
The third target is to be positive on carbon and on the forest.
You all know that coco grows in a kind of rainforest environment.
We don't want to be only positive with our carbon footprint, but we also want to really help to grow the forest back.
And finally, we want to source not only cocoa but also all other ingredients in a sustainable way by 2025.
So 100% of our ingredients should be sustainably sourced by that year.
How much progress is still required because obviously child labor is constantly in the news in this area?
How much is still needed from the industry in order to be able to meet these targets?
These commitments are and definitely a huge step change from where we are today.
It doesn't say that there's not a lot of initiatives already which have been taken by the industry in the last 10 years, but also the latest kind of reports indicate that child labor is still out there, and we can just not accept it.
We have to make sure that we eradicate child labor and let children be the child that they need to be.
And obviously a lot of the the focus on cocoa is is from the original origin for West African origin products.
So what about looking to other parts of the world in terms of increasing production and yield in those countries?
We want to have cocoa farmer communities that thrive and we want to have that in all the 40 kind of origins where we source our beans.
Of course the situations are different whether you go to Brazil, Indonesia, or to the Ivory Coast.
So each country will require its own set of interventions to deliver against these four objectives which we will have for all countries in terms of meeting the objectives, how are you how is it being audited and how is it being looked at?
Very important on these kinds of topics to be transparent, to be open about what you do and where you are.
So we have translated these commitments in a clear set of PPIs on which we will report on an annual basis.
We will be very open on our progress, show where we are, and if there are gaps against our ambition, then we will say what we are going to do to close it.
So we'll be pretty clear if you if you meet these targets and meet these objectives.
We hopefully will be absolutely clear on where we are and how we are progressing against delivering against these objectives.
Peter, thank you very much.
