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Advance Regeneration

We’re all in this together to create a resilient future for the planet and its people.

Challenges

Climate change is already impacting lives. It’s noticeable in shifting weather patterns and reduced resource availability.

Climate change and environmental threats such as the degradation of forests, land, soil, and waterways are impacting farmers and communities. These threats put farmers' livelihoods at risk and jeopardize the accessibility and availability of quality food. The planet’s resources must be protected and restored, which requires a transformative change.

Our Commitment

At Nestlé, we made a promise to advance regenerative food systems at scale: to help protect, renew, and restore the environment; improve farmers’ livelihoods; and enhance the well-being of communities.

Regenerative agriculture is our first step, but we are not stopping there.

What we have done so far

Net Zero

As a signatory of the UN 'Business Ambition for 1.5°C' pledge, Nestlé is one of the first companies to share our detailed, time-bound plan (pdf, 10Mb), committing us to halve our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050.

Global actions focus on supporting farmers and suppliers to advance regenerative agriculture, planting 200 million trees within the next ten years, completing our transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2025, addressing emissions in logistics and transport, as well as increasing the number of our 'carbon neutral' brands and developing more plant-based foods.

Regenerative Agriculture

We have embarked on a journey toward regeneration. We’re doing that by accelerating the transition to a regenerative “food system” – a term that encompasses every actor, activity, process, and product in growing, raising, making, delivering, and consuming food. 

More than two thirds of Nestlé’s emissions come from the production of agricultural ingredients we use. To tackle this, we will work with our suppliers to change the way food is produced.

We will invest CHF 1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) over the next five years to spark regenerative agriculture across our supply chain. We – the world’s Good Food, Good Life company – will work with our food system partners, including our network of more than 500,000 farmers and 150,000 suppliers, to advance regenerative farming practices that include enhancement of biodiversity, soil conservation, regeneration of water cycles, and integration of livestock.

"With our long-standing partnerships with farming communities globally, we want to increase our support for farming practices that are good for the environment and good for people," said Mark Schneider, Nestlé CEO.

At Nestlé, regeneration is rooted in agricultural practices that improve soil health and fertility, sequester carbon, protect and restore natural resources like water, and foster biodiversity.

We are working in partnership with farmers to ensure that nothing leaves farms as waste; by repurposing water for irrigation, animal waste for fertilizer, and capturing methane to reduce emissions. These farm-by-farm changes, when scaled up, will add up to significant greenhouse gas reductions.

In addition, we are committed to supporting improved and diversified farmer incomes through our sustainability programs and we will implement new living income programs for farmers in our value chain to make farming more attractive.

Nestlé will co-invest with farmers, facilitate lending, or help them obtain loans for specific equipment that support the drive towards regenerative agriculture. Premiums will be paid for, and bigger quantities bought, of many raw materials produced using regenerative agriculture practices. Farmers will also be offered access to the latest science and technology and provided technical assistance from Nestlé’s vast network of Research & Development experts and agronomists.

Inspiring the next generation of farmers

To support young people who are passionate about farming, we at Nestlé are launching a new training platform to attract and train the next generation of farmers from around the world. The training will focus on regenerative agriculture practices and improving the resilience of farms to climate change for more than 40,000 farmers participating in one of our agripreneurship programs.

Supporting coffee communities

Nestlé works closely with over 200,000 coffee farmers worldwide through global coffee sustainability programs such as the Nescafé Plan and Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality.

We enlist the expertise of over 600 agronomists around the world, to support coffee farmers for a more productive and sustainable harvest.

Since 2010, Nestlé has facilitated or conducted over 900,000 trainings on good agricultural practices for the farmers we work with. This helps improve the efficiency and quality of farms, better inform farmers so they are more able to diversify their crops, reduce economic risk, improve biodiversity, and reduce environmental footprints.

Working with dairy farmers

Agriculture accounts for nearly two-thirds of Nestlé's total greenhouse gas emissions, with dairy and livestock making up about half of that. In dairy, for example, we are assessing cutting edge science and technology to reduce emissions at farm level. We will start working with 30 reference dairy farms in 12 countries to test scalable, climate-friendly, and regenerative agricultural practices that help achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

One example of collaborating with farmers in the Middle East and North Africa is Nestlé’s sourcing of more than 60,000 tons of raw milk per year directly from more than 6,000 small farms of various sizes in Morocco. The “Model Village” milk collection program helps farmers and future generations of farmers enhance safety, quality, quantity, breeding practices, water conservation, and environmental practices through technical and competencies training. For example, we will help farmers improve manure management by building biogas stations that reduce CO2 emissions and provide biogas for domestic use. Solar energy will also be introduced to all milk collection centers by 2023.

Rethinking Manufacturing

Nestlé is committed to achieving 100% renewable electricity at our 800 global sites by 2025.

Actions towards that end include Nestlé’s Al Maha Factory in Dubai South housing 20,000 photovoltaic (PV) panels, generating 7.2GWh of electricity and eliminating 4.5 million kilograms of CO2 per year.

Our solar plant installation at our  water factory in Al Husseiniya in southern Jordan also generates enough power to supply 40% of the site’s current energy demand, saving 1,300 tons of CO2 per year.

The port city of El Jadida on Morocco’s Atlantic coast has also become home to the latest Nestlé solar plant in the Middle East and North Africa, with the installation in 2021 of nearly 2,600 PV panels on a 7,000 m2 annex to our local milk and coffee products factory that will generate 1.7 GWh of electricity per year, eliminating more than one million kilograms of CO2 annually.

Between 2010-2020, we achieved 37% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of product manufactured globally. A 60% reduction was achieved across the Middle East and North Africa’s 25 food, beverage, and water manufacturing sites during the same period, overachieving our set commitment of 35%. Zero waste for disposal was also achieved at our food manufacturing sites and distribution centers in the region.

Inauguration of UAE’s Largest Ground-Mounted Private Solar Plant at Al-Maha Factory - YouTube

Logistics

We at Nestlé are switching our global fleet of vehicles to lower emission options and will reduce and offset business travel by 2022.

We achieved 25% reduction in CO2 emissions in logistics and supply chain activities across the Middle East and North Africa over the past three years, through initiatives that include increasing truck capacity by 10% for transport from factories; using Artificial Intelligence to track & trace our transportation fleet to reduce CO2 emissions by 7%; reducing the number of kilometers driven by more than 10% across key countries in the region; and launching the CHEP pallet ‘share and reuse’ business model in factories in the United Arab Emirates to reduce CO2 emissions across the supply chain.

Transforming Products

Within our product portfolio, we at Nestlé are continuously expanding our offering of plant-based food and beverages and reformulating products to lower environmental impact. We are increasing the number of 'carbon neutral' brands we offer to give consumers the opportunity to contribute to the fight against climate change. 

Examples include Garden Gourmet plant-based food as well as Garden of Life supplements, which will achieve carbon neutrality by 2022; Sweet Earth plant-based food, among other brands, will do the same by 2025. These come on top of Nespresso, S.Pellegrino, Perrier, and Acqua Panna's commitment to carbon neutrality by 2022, with the rest of the Nestlé Waters category achieving the same by 2025.

KitKat, one of the world’s most popular chocolate brands, has also pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025, aiming to reduce the emissions generated through the sourcing of its ingredients, the manufacturing of the product, and its distribution by more than 50%. 

Nestlé Professional – the Nestlé arm committed to food service operations– launched its ‘Sweet Earth’ plant-based range in the Middle East and North Africa in 2021. The offerings of The Awesome Burger, Vegetarian Schnitzel, and Vegetarian Nuggets are in line with Nestlé’s strive to provide more delicious, nutritious, and sustainable meat alternatives for people looking to incorporate meatless options into their diet.

Forest Positive

Nestlé is committed to ensuring our operations are 100% deforestation-free by 2022 for palm oil, sugar, soy, meat, pulp and paper, and by 2025 for coffee and cocoa. In fact, 90% of our key ingredients — palm oil, sugar, soy, meat, as well as pulp and paper — have already been assessed as deforestation-free as of December 2020.

We will also plant 200 million trees by 2030 in and around farms where we source our ingredients.

Through our Forest Positive approach, we at Nestlé source our ingredients by investing in suppliers who actively conserve forests; respect human rights for all, including Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC); and promote sustainable livelihoods.

These actions build upon a decade of work to end deforestation in our key forest-risk commodities. 

Nestlé has used tools such as supply chain mapping, certification, on-site-verification, and satellite monitoring services like Starling or Global Forest Watch, to achieve these results. In addition, we collaborate with farmers, farming communities, and suppliers on the ground on our deforestation goals.

Get Onboard!

For more on #GenerationRegeneration, you can visit the journey’s webpage, and watch a short video on YouTube.