Nutrition
What we eat not only impacts our health but also the health of the planet. So if you want to eat a sustainable diet, one that is healthy for you and the planet, what do you need to do?
This is where it gets tricky. There are no black and white answers as to what is good and what is bad. It depends on all sorts of stuff from where, when and how your food is produced and transported through to how much gets wasted at home and along the way.
What is very clear though is that there is a need for some changes. After all, if everyone lived (and ate) as we do in the UK, we would need at least three planets to support us.
Given that we only have one available, that's a problem. Especially since the one that we have isn't in the best shape, what with all the significant global challenges going on.
We want to make sure we're doing everything we can to lower the impacts associated with making our products, whilst at the same time ensuring that they taste great and are healthy for you. Getting the right balance between impact and nutrition underpins our entire sustainability strategy.
Ingredients
Fruit is at the heart of our business, so we take it pretty seriously. Not only do we want it to taste great, we also want to make sure we buy it from suppliers who look after both their workers and the environment.
Our fruit comes from all over the world, from thousands of different farms of all types and sizes - large plantations, co-operative groups, tiny family farms and even from the Amazon rainforest. This means that while there is definitely no 'one size fits all' approach to buying responsibly, the following are all really important to the way we buy:
- Firstly, we learn as much as we can about our ingredients - how they are grown, the challenges for our suppliers, and how we can help them.
- We have our own set of minimum standards covering all relevant environment and social issues for suppliers that are not covered by existing certification.
- Schemes
- We favour suppliers certified by independent environmental and social organizations (such as the Rainforest Alliance), and pay a premium for certified fruit
- We work on sustainability issues in partnership with our suppliers for particularly troublesome issues
Of course, we can't promise our suppliers are perfect. We're certainly not perfect, so we can't expect them to be either. But we do ask that they abide by fair, minimum standards, and work to improve their social and environmental performance year on year. Our strategy is to work with people who are the most committed to making real improvements and that we will, in turn, help them get there. Achieving our goals is going to be a long journey, and probably one that will never end, but every small positive change is a step in the right direction.
Case study: hot mangoes
In 2009 we undertook a project to identify how climate change will impact the
growing of the fruit that we use for our smoothies. The project highlighted a number
of concerns, one of which was that the areas in India where we buy our alphonso
mangoes are already experiencing climatic change and that this is likely to intensify in
coming years. These findings were supported by discussions with mango growers who
described warmer winters, changes to the monsoon, reduced pollination levels and
even hail storms (apparently not all that common). In 2010 we commenced a project
to identify farming practices that will help the mango trees adjust to the changed
climate, and still allow the production of quality fruit. We are working with 18 farms for
2 years, allowing us to trial the farming practices across two complete harvest seasons.
We are now at the end of the first harvest season and the initial results from the trial
look great. The farms participating in the trial used 50% less agrochemicals, achieved
between 25-40% greater fruit retention and also a slightly larger fruit size. Good for
the farmers, good for the environment and a great result given the changing climate.
It’s still early days though so lots more work to do. Over the next harvest season we
will continue working with the farmers, with the ultimate aim of producing guidance
documents and training for all the farms.
Case study: The rain in Spain
We buy some of our strawberries from the south of Spain. Unfortunately the rain in Spain falls mostly where our strawberries aren’t. For this reason the farmers rely quite heavily on irrigation to grow all these
lovely, juicy berries, and the available water supply is being put under considerable stress from the combination
of increased agricultural production and housing developments. Water supply in this area is also particularly important given it’s aproximity to the Donana National Park
- a key stopover wetland for 6 million migratory birds each year from Northern
Europe to Southern Africa.In 2010 we commenced a project in partnership with our supplier and Unilever to map the water footprint of a number of our strawberry farms. The footprint will show exactly how much water
each farm has used across the entire season (from planting through to end of harvest). The
season finished at the end of June 2011, and we are now in the process of analysing the water
data to identify opportunities to improve the water efficiency of the farms. After the summer we
will be holding a workshop with our farmers on how to implement these methods. We will also
be sharing the data with the WWF to input into current water management planning for the
entire region. We hope that our work will form a valuable contribution to establishing how
agriculture, housing and the wetland can happily co-exist in this region.
Charity-
projects, committed almost £1.3 million to community projects and used its funding to leverage an
extra £5.8 million from major public grant givers such as the EU and DFID. The foundation’s projects
have so far helped 505,000 people (the equivalent of 100,000 families). And it will continue to
help many more.
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