Nestle is one of the biggest food companies in the world and their goal is to be 100% sustainable by 2025. Their plan called the Nestle Cocoa Plan has four key parts, sustainable sourcing, farmer support, child labor prevention, and environmental sustainability.
I recently did a paper about a similar company, Hershey’s, for another class. Hershey’s has kicked the can a lot when it came to sustainability. They said they were going to be fully sustainable by 2010, then pushed it back to 2012, then pushed it back to 2023, then pushed it back to 2025 just like Nestle. While it’s true that both of these companies have environmental scientists working for them, it’s a bit doubtful that they will ever accomplish their goals when we’ve seen a repeated behavior of them pushing back those deadlines.
For the sustainable sourcing they plan to only buy their goods from farms that are certified sustainable through certification programs like Fairtrade. Additionally, they plan on helping their farmers improve their yields and improve the soil quality, etc. by having some of their scientists work on the farms. Nestle has had a child labor problem in the past just like Hershey’s because cocoa is grown mostly in Africa and South America where the governments there either don’t have laws about child labor or don’t enforce them so part of Nestle’s sustainability program is to remove child labor from their company which means that they need Nestle overseers in the farms. Nestle is also converting to renewable energy in their factories for their environmental sustainability pledge.