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Climate change is one of society's greatest challenges. It is also one of the greatest risks to the future of our business and we are working towards net zero in our business and supply chains.


Why we care about improving the efficiency of Nestlé's digital ecosystem

To host our websites, Nestlé uses servers that consume energy to run and provide users with access to images, videos and text. Energy is also required to view and download content.

Using devices to access the internet is such a day-to-day activity, many of us don't think about the fact it generates greenhouse gas emissions. With over 70 corporate websites, changes we make to improve the energy efficiency of our digital assets can help reduce emissions.


What improvements are we making to our Nestlé corporate websites

Since 2021, we've worked to ensure any improvements to Nestlé's corporate websites use principles that take into account their footprint. This includes:

Improved performance

To enhance the performance of our websites, we are implementing effective caching strategies and improving page speed. This means reducing the size of our images and PDFs, therefore reducing page load time and the energy use required. At the same time, we must ensure any imagery and videos used on our sites resonate with the messaging on the page and serve a purpose. We want to provide users with a faster and more seamless browsing experience, optimizing energy use along the way.

Structure & user journey

We are regularly revamping the different sections of our Nestlé corporate websites to create a more intuitive and efficient user journey. We're simplifying the navigation, creating better cross-linking, improving our internal search functionality, and improving filters. All of these actions help our audiences to quickly find the information they are seeking, therefore reducing time spent on site, and ultimately, reducing energy usage. 

Optimizing content

We regularly review our website data to identify further ways of improving our content. For example, by adding the relevant keywords that our users are searching for, content can be found more easily in a search engine. If our audiences spend less time searching, less energy will be required.

Dark mode

Dark mode provides users with the flexibility to choose between light and dark themes. Using a 'dark' mode allows users to reduce power consumption on devices with OLED or AMOLED screens. Dark mode is also more accessible and offers many users an enhanced browsing experience.

Measurement

We are working on a measurement model to accurately estimate our carbon footprint across the entire Nestlé digital ecosystem. We are developing a robust approach that encompasses various aspects, covering hosting, design and development partners. We wish to build a comprehensive understanding of our impact and how the various actions outlined above can help us address it.


Will it affect how our audiences use our websites?

The changes we are making to reduce our digital carbon footprint will have a positive impact on SEO, accessibility and making the user journey more streamlined, so overall it should improve the user experience as well as energy use.

Water Stewardship Card

 

 

Sponsors Leader Members
Assaad Saadeh
(MENA Water Resources Manager)
  Hammam Alatrash
(Production Head)
Hero Eduardo
(SSHE Officer)
Ahmad Taha
(Fleet Manager)
Ayat Uobaid
(Production Supervisor)
Loiy Al Jammal
(Dammam Factory Manager)
Bader Banat
(Dammam Water Treatment Head)
Mohammad Abu Diah
(Engineering Head)
Peter John
(QHSE Coordinator)
Shadi Al Absi
(Senior Supply Chain Officer)
 
Hamza Alarood
(KSA Sustainability Manager)
  Ali Saleh
(Quality Head)
Saber Otain
(Quality Engineer)
Mohammad Sitotaw
(Distribution Coordinator)
 
    Ali Al Dandan
(HR Section Head)
Sadam Ubiedat
(HR Section Head)
Anas Al Saadi
(E-Com National Sales Manger)
 

Cross-functional team was created to insure delivering message to all department. Team engagement must be at all level.

 

Graph

 

Water Stewardship Performance

% WSP Action Plan Completion Rate
  • Our water stewardship journey will typically take several years to achieve full certification. Once achieved, it will remain a long-term activity and commitment. 
  • The first aspect is to plan for implementing water stewardship
  • The second and longer-term aspect is to create a more permanent Water Stewardship Plan, but one that will develop and evolve over time.

Dammam Commitment

Welcome to Nestlé Middle East!

To be successful here in Nestlé Middle East you have to keep our three main values in mind: family, health and respect. When we say Family, we mean not only your family at Nestlé, your team, but also your family at home. We offer our employees good working conditions and help them to stay safe, healthy and engaged are top priorities. Therefore, we support a flexible work environment. This means employees and their managers can agree on when, where and how employees work, in order to better balance personal needs and business requirements.

Furthermore, we encourage our employees to take part in a variety of wellness activities at work, such as elastic band training, power walk and mindfulness.

Respect is our third and main core value: respect for your team and for the iconic brand you are working for. At Nestlé you will find an inclusive environment where you will be encouraged to express all your potential and to be a force for good with your team. Only by respecting each other’s ideas and values, you’ll be able to succeed.

In order to support your integration process, we have prepared the below content that can be reviewed at any time before your day 1.

If you have any question, please reach out to us!

Your HR Team

Find our more!

Information Security

Health & Safety

Information you need to know

Welcome to Nestlé Middle East!

To be successful here in Nestlé Middle East you have to keep our three main values in mind: family, health and respect. When we say Family, we mean not only your family at Nestlé, your team, but also your family at home. We offer our employees good working conditions and help them to stay safe, healthy and engaged are top priorities. Therefore, we support a flexible work environment. This means employees and their managers can agree on when, where and how employees work, in order to better balance personal needs and business requirements.

Furthermore, we encourage our employees to take part in a variety of wellness activities at work, such as elastic band training, power walk and mindfulness.

Respect is our third and main core value: respect for your team and for the iconic brand you are working for. At Nestlé you will find an inclusive environment where you will be encouraged to express all your potential and to be a force for good with your team. Only by respecting each other’s ideas and values, you’ll be able to succeed.

In order to support your integration process, we have prepared the below content that can be reviewed at any time before your day 1.

If you have any question, please reach out to us!

Your HR Team

Watch the Welcome message from:

Mark Schneider, our CEO

Find our more!

Information Security

Health & Safety

Information you need to know

An innovative income accelerator program aimed at addressing child labor risks

Cocoa-farming communities face immense challenges, from rural poverty and increasing climate risks to a lack of access to financial services and basic infrastructure, such as water, health care and education.

These factors can lead to social issues, including the prevalence of child labor risk on family farms. By helping families close the gap to living income and protect children, the program aims to tackle child labor risks.

 

Helping farmers achieve a living income

Our income accelerator program aims to improve the livelihoods of cocoa-farming families. The program rewards cocoa-farming families not just for the quantity and quality of their cocoa beans, but also for practices that benefit the environment and local community.

Our holistic approach aims to deliver long-lasting impact by incentivizing the enrolment of children in school, while advancing regenerative agriculture practices and gender equality. The program rewards practices that increase crop productivity and help secure additional sources of income, which aim to close the gap to living income and help protect children.

Examples of practices that we will incentivize, through cash payments, include: 

  • School enrollment for all children in the household ages 6-16
  • Implementing good agricultural practices, such as pruning, which increase crop productivity
  • Performing agroforestry activities to increase climate resilience, like planting shade trees
  • Generating diversified incomes, for example through growing other crops; raising livestock such as chickens, beekeeping, or processing other products like cassava

These incentives are on top of the support provided by the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana that Nestlé pays and premiums Nestlé offers for certified cocoa.

Nestlé’s efforts over many years have helped, but more is needed. We are launching a holistic approach to getting kids in school, accelerating farmer income and supporting families.

Mark Schneider
Mark Schneider Nestlé CEO

Building on the learnings of the Nestlé Cocoa Plan

The program builds on the work we have been doing for more than a decade to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in our cocoa supply chains, through the Nestlé Cocoa Plan. What we have learned from this program informs our current approach, focusing on initiatives proven to positively impact farming families and reduce child labor risk.

Expanding the income accelerator program to 160 000 cocoa-farming families

What started as a pilot with 1,000 Nestlé Cocoa Plan farmers in 2020 in Côte d’Ivoire, our program will scale and expand over the next decade, informed by continuous evaluation and learning. By 2030, our ambition is to reach all cocoa-farming families in our global supply chain.

2020
2022
2024
2030
Accelarator program

Direct cash incentives to grow income substantially

During the first two years, cocoa-farming families can earn up to CHF 500 in direct bonus payments annually by taking part in the program and reaching the associated targets. As farmers’ incomes increase from additional sources and better yields, the cash incentive is reduced to CHF 250.

The income accelerator program pays cash incentives directly to farmers, via secure mobile transfer. The cash incentive is split equally between the male and female head of household to encourage gender equality, share financial responsibilities, and build more resilient households.

Collaboration is crucial

Our ambitious program would not be possible without the support and input of our longstanding partners. Alongside IDH (The Sustainable Trade Initiative), ICI (International Cocoa Initiative), the Rainforest Alliance, governments and farmers, we will continuously measure, assess and strengthen the program to deliver maximum impact for farming families.

Increased traceability and transparency

At the same time, we are remodeling our sourcing to segregate and trace all cocoa products from origin to factory, which in turn makes it easier to achieve greater transparency in our supply chain.

We aim to bring about lasting change and transform how we source our cocoa, enabling us to achieve full traceability and segregation of our cocoa products, from origins to factory, in the next five years.

This will drive greater supply chain transparency and accountability, both internally and on an industry-wide scale, while giving our consumers more visibility into the source of their ingredients. This is critical to effectively addressing child labor risks in cocoa production.

Related Information

CSV progress

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.

Imagine a world where no waste ends up in a landfill or as litter…

Challenges

Today, waste leakage poses a constant threat to the environment.

The output of solid waste on the planet has grown from 25 gigatons, that’s 25 billion tons, in 1990, to 86 gigatons in 2020 – and is projected to reach 140 gigatons by 2050, according to the World Economic Forum.

Tackling plastic pollution has clearly never been more pressing, with plastic waste continuing to accumulate in landfills and in oceans.

Our Commitment

We expect 95% of our packaging to be designed for recycling by 2025 and remain committed to achieving 100%. We will promote a circular economy and drive collective action to ensure packaging stays out of the environment.

Our vision is that none of our packaging, including plastics, ends up in landfills or as litter, including in oceans, lakes, or rivers.

What we have done so far

Reducing use of packaging material

We at Nestlé are using less packaging material and reducing our use of virgin plastics by leading the shift from virgin plastics to food-grade recycled plastics, while accelerating the development of innovative packaging solutions.

Nestlé Waters, for example, is committed to increasing the use of recycled material by 50% by 2025, and to collecting as many bottles as it produces by 2030. Nestlé water bottles are already recyclable, and increasingly made with more recycled content (rPET), where locally possible. Nestlé's Belgian mineral water brand Valvert was the first to launch a bottle made of 100% rPET in 2019, meaning that it only uses old bottles to produce new bottles, with no new virgin PET needing to be created.

We systematically review the need for plastic shrink wrap on pallets and product packaging, and identify opportunities to substitute paper, or eliminate plastic entirely.

Another example comes from Nespresso, which has taken an important step towards circularity with the introduction of new capsules made with 80% recycled aluminum.

Scaling reusable and refillable systems

To eliminate the need for disposable packaging, Nestlé is working hard to eliminate non-recyclable plastics and invest in innovative, alternative delivery systems.

We, for example, are scaling up reusable and refillable options for our Petcare and soluble coffee products through collaboration with the start-up company MIWA in Switzerland.

In France Nestlé is offering reusable containers for Nesquik cocoa powder, Ricoré chicory and coffee drink, as well as Chocapic Bio cereals, in partnership with the French retailer Carrefour and other entities. Dispensers for Nescafé and Milo are also already available in other countries around the world.

Pioneering alternative packaging materials to facilitate recycling

Nestlé is evaluating and developing various sustainable packaging materials, collaborating with industrial partners, and investing up to CHF 2 billion (US$2.16 billion) to lead the shift from virgin plastics to food-grade recycled plastics and to accelerate the development of innovative sustainable packaging solutions.

The development and testing of new, more environmentally friendly packaging materials is driven by our Nestlé Institute of Packaging Sciences, the food industry’s first such enterprise. The Institute has around 50 scientists who conduct cutting-edge packaging research to ensure the safety and applicability of new materials.

Research outcomes include new refillable or reusable systems, simplified materials, high-performance barrier papers, and the introduction of more recycled content to Nestlé's packaging. The Institute collaborates closely with more than 180 packaging experts embedded in our global Research and Development network, as well as with research institutions, start-ups, and suppliers.

Product packaging transformations

Recent packaging transformations within Nestlé’s product portfolio include transitioning to paper packaging across various formats, with examples such as the Smartiessharing block, a popular color-coated chocolate confectionery product, becoming available in a recyclable paper wrapper in the United Kingdom. Other brands such as Nesquik, Nescafé, KitKat, and Maggi have witnessed similar shifts to paper packaging in various locations. Paper straws for Nesquik, Milo, and Nescafé have been introduced.

NIDO FortiGrow pouch is also now designed for recycling without impacting the product’s shelf-life.

Supporting infrastructures that help to shape a waste-free future

One hundred percent recyclability is not enough, which is why Nestlé is committed to playing an active role in developing plastics collection, sorting, and recycling schemes across the world, and to converting packaging into a valuable resource. We have a longer-term ambition to stop plastic leakage into the environment across our global operations.

We are a founding signatory and partner of the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, an initiative led jointly by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and UN Environment, to promote and encourage progress in tackling the plastic waste problem.

We advocate for the design and implementation of effective mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility schemes that are contributing to industry coalitions which aim to encourage circular economies within countries, and promote recycling and reusing in manners that create shared value for all.

DORNA

We at Nestlé have identified 20 countries that account for 50% of our plastic usage, where we will focus our efforts to increase recycling rates and support waste management infrastructure. These include Egypt, where we launched the initiative “DORNA,” which means “our turn” in Arabic, in Cairo in 2020, in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Environment and other local entities. We aim to boost recycling of plastic packaging material and improve our ecosystem by incentivizing waste collectors to pick up more PET plastics for redeemable rewards. DORNA is slated to collect 17,000 tons of PET in 2021; and projected to collect up to 28,000 tons in 2024. These figures will allow us to achieve plastic neutrality, by collecting as much plastics as we produce.

Coalition CIRCLE

Nestlé is part of a government-endorsed coalition in Abu Dhabi, The Coalition CIRCLE (Coalition of Innovation in Recycling towards a Closed Loop Economy), comprised of NGOs, global and local private companies, which has committed to tackling the issue of packaging waste pollution.

Members recently partnered with Veolia to launch the RECAPP app, which offers a convenient and rewarding solution to recycle from home, while enabling sustainable lifestyles, and promoting a circular economy. The app incentivizes free door-door collection of plastics and metal cans; and has already been utilized by more than 7,000 households. (Yasmine)

Coffee Capsules

Nespresso has been collecting and recycling its coffee capsules around the world, including in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Lebanon, and Jordan.

Similar programs are being implemented by Nescafé Dolce Gusto.

Driving new behaviors 

We at Nestlé are leading the way on driving behavioral changes which are essential to tackling the global plastic waste challenge.

We are rolling out a sustainable packaging education and training program for over 270,000 employees, to accelerate behavior change and help us meet our packaging objectives. Other actions within our operations include eliminating single-use plastic items that cannot be recycled from all our facilities worldwide.

We are inspiring consumers to change their behaviors with such offerings as a digital platform to help dispose of packaging waste appropriately in Italy.

Another example from the United Arab Emirates is the launch of the Nestlé Pure Life Eco Mission in 2021, in partnership with the Zeloop mobile phone app. It aims to collect recyclable plastic bottles of any brand, raise recycling awareness, and drive behavioral change by offering rewards to those who deposit plastic bottles at mapped spots.

Nestlé supports external initiatives and encourages innovation geared towards driving behavioral changes. One way we do that is through the Nestlé Creating Shared Value (CSV) Prize, which since 2010 has aimed at identifying system-changing initiatives for some of today's most critical environmental and social issues. The Prize’s 2020-2021 edition tackled the challenge of “How do we create a waste-free future?” Among its ten finalists was Lebanon’s Live Love Recycle which created a mobile phone app that offers on-demand recycling collection services, removing a barrier to sustainable waste management.

Get Onboard!

Look into local recycling schemes near you and get onboard!

In the UAE for example, you can download the Zeloop app, as well as the RECAPP app in Abu Dhabi.

Water is vital to all life.

Challenges

Global availability of clean and safe water is already in short supply.

Climate change, higher water consumption, growing urbanization, and damaged infrastructure are some of the factors contributing to the deterioration of the natural water cycle. Additionally, rising temperatures and more extreme weather patterns are causing more flooding and droughts.

These trends are impacting the global availability of clean, safe water. The impact is apparent at a local level, with those in vulnerable societies feeling it most, including many of the farmers who grow food and the ingredients for food products.  

Our Commitment

We at Nestlé protect our precious water resources through our Caring for Water initiative. As of 2025, our actions will help nature retain more water than we use in our water business.

We will also work with farmers and communities to improve water efficiency.

What have we done so far

Water Regeneration

We at Nestlé protect the quality of natural waters and steward water resources. We are advancing the regeneration of the water cycle to help create a positive water impact everywhere our waters business operates.

We use our expertise through the implementation of more than 100 projects for our 48 Waters sites by 2025. These measurable actions will support better water management and infrastructure. 

All projects are measurable, using the World Resources Institute’s Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA) methodology, which provides consistency in analyzing water management activities and helps to ensure that such activities address current and future shared water challenges. 

Examples of how Nestlé does this in the Middle East and North Africa include leading the drive for multisectoral partnership to help Lebanon’s Shouf Biosphere Reserve successfully enhance the recharge of groundwater reservoirs; a project to irrigate organic agriculture with excess water in Jordan; the delivery of water treatment, filtration and pipeline infrastructure for the municipal water supply in Benha, Egypt; and constructing a water fountain near our water factory in Algeria to provide access to clean water. 

Other global examples include protecting land from development and natural flood management interventions in Derbyshire, United Kingdom, and river restoration and renaturation projects in Vosges, France

Overall, we have collaborated with local authorities to provide access to water hygiene and sanitation (WASH) services around our facilities to more than 1.4 million people around the world, including 30,000 in the Middle East and North Africa.

We have reduced our global operations’ direct water withdrawals per tonne of product by 32% since 2010, with the Middle East and North Africa reducing 42% across regional food factories in the same period.

Alliance for Water Stewardship

We at Nestlé are committed to certifying all of our Waters sites with the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) standard by 2025, which requires water users to understand and act collectively on water challenges.

We do this across four key areas:

  • In factorieswhere we continuously improve the water use efficiency
  • In watersheds where we work with partners to protect shared water resources
  • Across our agricultural supply chains where we help stakeholders improve water management practices
  • In communitieswhere we operate to provide access to clean water and sanitation ;

We have already AWS-certified 28 of our water factories around the world, including three in the Middle East and North Africa, and we’ve committed to certifying all our water factories globally by 2025.

The AWS ignites and nurtures global and local leadership in credible water stewardship that recognizes and secures the social, cultural, environmental, and economic value of freshwater. AWS is a global network dedicated to advancing and deepening the impact of credible water stewardship.

We are also expanding our current efforts to manage water sustainably and increase our collaboration with partners to identify and support local solutions that are designed to help regenerate ecosystems.

Lebanon

A monitoring study in Lebanon’s Shouf Mountains, done over two years in collaboration between the Shouf Biosphere Reserve and Nestlé Waters, found the area’s overall groundwater balance to be positive by around 12 million cubic meters per year, and led to the creation of a committee to tackle high impact from climate change and human activities. Multisectoral partnership has since been put in place to help the Reserve successfully enhance the recharge of groundwater reservoirs in the area.

Jordan

Helping develop thriving and resilient communities is also being done hrough such collaborationsas one with the Ministry of Water and Irrigation in Jordan Jordanto supply villagers with safe drinking water by providing a new well in the village of Hussainiya, about 170 Kilometers south of Amman, drilled using state of the art technology. The well can pump up to 120 cubic meters per hour to cover the clean water needs of over 20,000 people in the area.

Egypt

Nestlé is collaborating with local authorities in Benha, Egypt, where a Nestlé bottling facility operates, to rehabilitate and help improve the water supply in the area. Benha is home to the community of Kafr Arbeen – a village of 27,000 people who lack access to clean water. The village’s water station was revamped, with a new water storage tank installed and pumping efficiency improved. A filtration system was also installed, and the piping network expanded so that more people get clean running water in their homes. In addition, the main irrigation canal of surrounding agricultural land was cleaned of polluting waste, and had its floor and walls reinforced to prevent leaking and improve flow.

Get Onboard!

Read more on the Caring for Water page, and download the 2020 Nestlé Creating Shared Value report.

It takes the youth of today to build prosperous communities tomorrow.

Communities thrive when they offer a bright future for younger generations. Young people who are helped to develop their skills increase their chances of finding fulfilling jobs or creating their own businesses. Supporting young generations helps build thriving, resilient communities, and aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Challenges

Are today’s youth prepared for what the future holds?

Around the world, more than 55 million people aged between 15 and 24 are unemployed.

Lockdowns and other global health-related measures implemented over the past few years have further deepened the situation. More than one in six young people are out of work, while those who remain employed have seen their working hours cut, according to the International Labour Organization.

Unemployment rates in the Middle East and North Africa are amongst the world’s highest at 29%, according to the World Economic Forum. This is a key factor contributing to Arab youth migration with nearly half the region’s young people considering leaving their countries, due mainly to economic, social, and political reasons, as cited by the 2020 Arab Youth Survey.

Young people also need to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow, where digitization and environmental sustainability will become even more important.

Making a decent living out of agriculture is increasingly becoming a challenge. As more young people migrate to cities, the average age of farmers increases. Climate change makes farming even more challenging and impacts the entire food system – a term that encompasses every actor, activity, process, and product in growing, raising, making, delivering, and consuming food.

Our Commitment

Our ambition at Nestlé is to help 10 million young people have access to economic opportunities by 2030.

What we have done so far

Nestlé needs YOUth

Through the Nestlé needs YOUth initiative, which was created in 2013, we help equip young generations with the skills they need to thrive in the workplace of today and tomorrow by:

  • Promoting employment and employability, equipping youth to get a fulfilling job and career
  • Supporting entrepreneurship, giving youth the right competencies to kickstart their career
  • Encouraging agripreneurship, helping provide young people with the right skills to feed the world

Throughout all our efforts, we at Nestlé aim to provide decent employment and equal opportunities, which are essential to helping people lead healthier, happier lives.

Employment & Employability

Nestlé has so far:

  • Offered more than 43,000 apprenticeship and traineeship opportunities worldwide
  • Provided 100,000 job opportunities annually for young people under 30 years old
  • Organized training sessions for more than one million young people around the world

In addition, in 2020 alone, more than one million young people attended our work readiness training events in person or online, and over 3,088 entrepreneurs benefited from advanced mentoring.

In the Middle East and North Africa, Nestlé is committed to supporting the career development of youth in the region, offering various opportunities for learning as well as creating at least 1,000 new jobs for people under the 30 years old by 2025. We will offer more than 1,750 internships, traineeships, and apprenticeship throughout the same period.

Achievements in the region so far include:

  • Hiring: Nestlé has hired nearly 3,200 young people under the age of 30 in the region since 2017. More than 800 of them were hired since January 2020 alone..
  • Internships: More than 1,450 internships and traineeships have been offered since 2017, including more than 230 since January 2020.
  • Readiness for Work events: implemented by working with universities across the region to offer expert advice to students in the areas of career advising, employability, business and corporate environment, and leadership. These have impacted more than 40,000 people, including nearly 5,000 through 30 events we held online and across the region in 2021. They include workshops, CV clinics, and mock interviews.
  • Digital skills: We will be further rolling out our YOUth eBusiness Academy. Trainees enrolled in the program will gain advanced digital skills (search, data, e-commerce) and obtain an official certification upon completion. Specific attention will also be given to digital skills in factories.
  • Promoting sustainability skills: We at Nestlé work to promote careers in sustainability through various training programs, conducted both internally and externally. One example of outside partnerships includes our collaboration with Masdar’s Youth 4 Sustainability Ecothon Innovation Challenge, where our contribution included training, coaching, and providing an internship opportunity.

The Nestlé Center of Excellence

Founded in 2012 in Saudi Arabia with a mission to help bridge the skills gap between academic curriculum and corporate expectations, the Nestlé Center of Excellence offers training programs in the Middle East and North Africa in Nutrition, Business, and Sales. It has so far trained nearly 250 people and hired 68, with the latest graduate batch emerging in October 2021.

Nesternship

 We at Nestlé have scaled up online training and launched the Nesternship initiative, which offers a digital internship program that helps young people in many countries gain professional experience remotely. The Program provides innovative means to select and train talented young people on the increasingly important areas of digitization and environmental sustainability.

Entrepreneurships, Startups, and Innovation

Now more than ever, young entrepreneurs need all the support they can get. Their innovation and creativity can have the power to change the world for the better. To help them make this change, Nestlé identifies and nurtures business talent in young people and helps them to kickstart and grow their businesses..

Until now, we have:

  • Supported social entrepreneurs with over CHF 2.5 million funding
  • Provided basic training and advanced mentoring to over 100 entrepreneurs
  • Engaged over 100 employees to provide support for young entrepreneurs
  • Created collaboration projects between entrepreneurs and Nestlé brands or markets

Creating Shared Value Prize

Since 2010, the Nestlé Creating Shared Value (CSV) Prize has aimed to identify system-changing initiatives for some of today's most critical environmental and social issues around the world. Through the CSV Prize, we promote and support changemakers who are creating scalable, locally relevant solutions.

The Nestlé Creating Shared Value Prize 2020-2021 tackled the challenge of “How do we create a waste-free future?” It was launched in association with Ashoka, the world’s leading network of systems-changing social entrepreneurs, and was open to social and commercial enterprises, nonprofits, and NGOs. It received entries from 173 applicants.

Ten finalists were selected based on their potential for positive impact for a waste-free future and for collaboration with Nestlé. Among them was Lebanon’s Live Love Recycle which created an app that offers on-demand recycling collection services, removing a barrier to sustainable waste management.

All CSV Prize finalists benefit from Ashoka's online resources and workshops, as well as coaching and mentoring.

Purina BetterwithPets Prize

Recognizing the transformative power of the pet-human bond, the Purina BetterwithPets Prize rewards inspiring social innovations that reimagine the role of pets in society.

A collaboration between Nestlé Purina and Ashoka to help identify novel ways to improve the lives of pets and their owners across Europe, Middle East and North Africa, the Prize was launched in 2017, with several finalists from the Middle East and North Africa emerging from its 2020 edition.

Pet Me, a mobile App project developed by a team of six young Saudi Arabian innovators which aims to facilitate free pet adoption and foster pet relationships and empathy in Saudi Arabia, won the People’s Choice category.

Reading Dogs, an initiative offering children in the United Arab Emirates the opportunity to interact meaningfully with pet dogs by reading to them, took home around CHF 10,000 ($10,700), coming in third in the highly coveted piloted project category. 

UNLEASHED 2021 Accelerator Lab Program

PawPots – a Lebanon-based subscription service provider of fresh, gently-cooked meals for dogs and cats – is one of six winners of Purina’s UNLEASHED 2021 Accelerator Lab Program, shining among 300 applicants from 50 countries for a prize of around $55,000 to upscale its business. It will also receive mentorship and supervision from Purina’s Accelerator team.

The start-up, which is soon expanding into the United Arab Emirates, was recognized for driving some of the most innovative ideas in pet care along with five other applicants from around Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa: France’s Animoscope; the UK’s BioKind; Finland’s Pawesomer; the UK’s PuppyFat; and France’s Scorpet.

R+D Accelerator

Nestlé's global R+D Accelerator network consists of 12 sites in eight different countries, with each located at a Nestlé R&D site and focusing on a specific product category or region.

In August 2021, we at Nestlé launched our largest R+D Accelerator at our fundamental research center in Lausanne, Switzerland. It provides a unique platform for startups, students, and Nestlé intrapreneurs to bring highly differentiated product innovations to the market fast. The internal and external teams have full access to Nestlé's state-of-the-art infrastructure and unmatched science, technology, and business expertise.

Agripreneurship: Getting the right skills to help young people feed the world

Farmers are at the heart of the food system and its future. That’s why Nestlé inspires, trains, and enables young farmers to develop necessary knowledge and skills, and nurtures their entrepreneurial spirit to sustainably manage their farms.

Already, we at Nestlé have:

  • Worked directly with more than 550,000 farmers annually through our Farmer Connect Program
  • Provided training to more than 400,000 farmers
  • Identified more than 20,000 young people as potential agripreneurs – those with the progressive attitudes necessary to grow and develop their farms as successful future businesses
  • Organized training events and support programs to help potential agripreneurs in the transformation of their farms
  • Locally adapted training and support programs, and created them with external partners

To support young people who are passionate about farming, we are also launching a new training platform in November 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.

Alliance for YOUth

Nestlé and the Alliance for YOUth, launched in 2014 to bring together entities to support youth career development, will be creating 300,000 new opportunities for young people across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa by 2025.

Nestlé’s objective is to make a positive difference beyond our Company, by partnering with governments, foundations, youth organizations, academia, and the private sector. We have collaborated closely with more than 300 private sector partners to develop the skills and resources young people need to enter the workplace or start their own businesses.

In 2019, Nestlé co-founded the Global Alliance for Youth along with 19 other multinational companies. While the initiative's initial commitment was to help six million young people improve their employability and skills, the Alliance exceeded all expectations, supporting over 10 million young people to date. The Alliance’s new aim is to support 15 million young people by 2022, helping them build employability skills for the future: Digital, Soft Skills, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), Career Advice, and Entrepreneurship. 

Get Onboard!

Young people interested in exploring opportunities offered by Nestlé and apply to jobs can visit our MENA career page. They can also find more information on LinkedIn.