We’re working with The Carbon Trust, a global climate change and sustainability consultancy, to measure our current carbon footprint
CARBON NEUTRAL BY 2025
This year we made a pledge to become carbon neutral by 2025. We’ve already taken big steps towards this goal, and we continue to strive towards it by reducing the emissions generated through the sourcing of our ingredients, the manufacturing of our products and their distribution by more than 50%.
A lot of our emissions occur through the production of our ingredients, such as cocoa and milk. We’ll reduce these through initiatives like restoring forests and supporting a transition to regenerative agriculture. For any emissions we can’t remove, we’ll invest in high-quality offsetting based on natural climate solutions.
Protecting and restoring forests
Deforestation is one of the main drivers of carbon emissions in the global agricultural supply chain. For the last decade we’ve been using a variety of tools to achieve our commitment to no deforestation, including certification, supply chain mapping and satellite imagery. We’re also focused on conservation and restoration, both by protecting and restoring the forests in our cocoa supply chain and through the launch of the Rimba Collective. This initiative supports the protection and restoration of over 500,000 hectares of tropical forest landscapes in Southeast Asia, where we source most of our ingredients.
Expanding regenerative agriculture
We’re building on our existing work with cocoa, palm oil, cereals, sugar, and dairy farmers to implement regenerative practices. Farming methods such as reducing synthetic inputs, better management of soils and tree planting can help draw down carbon from the atmosphere, enhance biodiversity and boost on-farm productivity. To support this, we’ll help farmers plant five million shade trees where we source our cocoa by 2025.
Speeding up the move to renewable electricity
We’re working to improve the environmental footprint of our factories. We’ve already reduced the energy required to produce KITKAT® by more than 40% per ton of product since 2000. Some of our manufacturing sites already use renewable electricity, such as power drawn from solar plants in the Middle East and Brazil, and we will continue to find new ways to end dependency on fossil fuels and use 100% renewable electricity for all our factories before the end of 2025.
Building on more than a decade of action
We have a history of improving the sustainability of our supply chain that dates back more than a decade. In 2009, Nestlé launched the Nestlé Cocoa Plan and by 2016, we sourced 100% of our cocoa from the programe. Under the plan, Nestlé has planted more than 15 million cocoa trees and invested CHF 300 million in cocoa sustainability. Our new carbon neutral pledge puts us on track to reduce our environmental footprint even further.
