Nestlé Endorses Caring for Climate at UN Summit

Nestlé has announced its endorsement of Caring for Climate, the world’s largest coalition on climate issues, as part of the company’s long standing efforts to further provide climate change leadership.

Speaking at the United Nations (UN) Climate Summit in New York, José Lopez, Nestlé Executive Vice President and Head of Operations, said the company would back related initiatives of other leading international organizations, such as the CDP, given the need of addressing the climate change issue.

“The Caring for Climate initiative is fully aligned with our own explicit commitments, which reflect our respect for society in which we operate, respect for the environment, respect for the future generations” said Mr. Lopez.

“Climate change must be addressed through mutually beneficial collaboration and multi-stakeholder channels to be effective ultimately,” he said.

Caring for Climate

Caring for Climate is led by the UN Global Compact, the UN Environment Programme and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Nestlé partners with a variety of UN agencies, academia and NGOs (non-governmental organizations), including the UN Global Compact and Rainforest Alliance, to address the range of complex climate, environmental and social issues that Nestlé and the world faces.

Caring for Climate commitments include continuously improving the efficiency of energy use and reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of products, services and processes.

As the world’s biggest food and beverage company, Nestlé is directly impacted by the effects of climate change and that is why the company has for several years taken meaningful GHG emissions reduction and climate change adaptation actions, like using renewable energy and improving energy efficiency in its operations.

Through such actions and the company’s work with suppliers, farmers and consumers to encourage resource efficiency, responsible product sourcing and environmental stewardship, Nestlé has been recognized over the years as an industry leader by a variety of organizations and NGOs, such as Oxfam and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

Other climate action initiatives

Nestlé has backed the New York Declaration on Forests, whose vision of halting and reversing the loss of forests. This is aligned with Nestlé pledge to help achieve zero net deforestation by 2020.

The company is also supporting major initiatives from other leading international organizations: the six climate action initiatives of CDP and the Trillion Tonne Communiqué of the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group.

The CDP aims, among other key goals, to remove commodity-driven deforestation from all supply chains by 2020 and to encourage responsible corporate engagement in climate policy.

Nestlé has reduced the GHG emitted in the manufacturing of one kilogram of products by half compared to 10 years ago. By 2015, Nestlé expects to reduce direct GHG emissions per ton of product by 35% compared with 2005, leading to an absolute reduction in GHG emissions.

Environmental sustainability is a major theme of Nestlé’s annual Creating Shared Value Forum, held on 9 October in Switzerland. The forum is an annual gathering of representatives from non-governmental organisations, industry and higher education where best practices around the concept of how to create shared value are shared and discussed.