Sustainable snacking, the Mondelez way

Since its creation in 2012, Mondelez international has set ambitious goals for programs in sustainability and nutrition and is committed to regularly and transparently report its progress.

Sustainable snacking, which is the company’s purpose to empower people “to snack right by providing the right snack, for the right moment, made the right way,” is Mondelez’s way of managing present challenges, whether it be the covid-19 pandemic or challenges to the environment.

Atty. Joseph Fabul, Mondelez Philippines country Manager for corporate and Government Affairs, attested that the company was lucky to have many trusted brands under its care which he said provided comfort to many Filipinos at the height of the pandemic last year.

“Mondelez is a mixed basket. We have over 50 years of presence in the Philippines with many trusted brands most Filipinos grew up with. Our snacks provided comfort during the hard time, that’s what we observed. There were challenges in logistics for the products while people were having a hard time going out to buy from groceries and sari-sari stores. We’re just happy that people get the semblance of comfort and connectedness through our products,” Fabul said.

Reporting

Mondelez is not required to submit the report to the Securities and exchange commission (Sec) since it’s not a publicly-listed company in the Philippines. However, Fabul explained that they have submitted sustainability reports for more than a decade to its mother company.

“We are tracking the adoption of standards such as those published by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board or SASB and the Task Force on climaterelated Financial disclosures or Tcfd,” he added.

Fabul explained that providing the right snack meant offering a delicious and varied portfolio. The right moment means providing easy access to consumers and encouraging them to snack mindfully. The right way means supporting a diverse community and reducing the company’s impact on the environment.

“now this is our commitment to sustainable snacking. Our ESG [environment, Social, and Governance] platform is centered on sustainable snacking. This means the following: First, we use sustainable ingredients. Through our cocoa life Program, we aim to source a hundred percent of our cocoa volume needed for our chocolate sustainably by 2025.”

“Second, on environmental impact.

We continue to evolve our manufacturing processes by constantly reducing the environmental impact of our operations. The 20 percent reduction in our carbon dioxide emissions from manufacturing exceeded our target by 15 percent. The 30 percent reduction in water usage exceeded our target by 10 percent. And the 30 percent reduction in total waste from manufacturing exceeded the target of 20 percent,” he said.

Green energy

He added that since 2019, the source power of Mondelez’s Paranaque Plant is 100 percent sustainable energy, using a combination of geothermal, solar, and other renewable energy to make the products and power the head office. The company also makes use of biodegradable sources of fuel for their biomass boiler and a rainwater treatment facility to lessen water waste.

For social sustainability, Mondelez has the Joy School Adoption Program. now on its 10th year, the program has adopted 19 schools and directly impacting more than 5,000 students through its nine-month feeding program.

“due to the pandemic, we’ve been forced to provide our beneficiaries with veggie packs and we have them picked up at public schools where they’re supposed to be studying, then we also provide them with home-learning kits, laptops, and Wifi so they can continue studying at home. Since the covid-19 pandemic began, we have been actively supporting various organizations and communities to provide especially for those seriously impacted by the lockdown. We provided over 10,000 boxes or cases of our products to various charitable organizations,” Fabul said.

On packaging innovation, Fabul said Mondelez is committed to their packaging 100 percent recycle-ready and labeled with consumer recycling information by 2025. So far, Mondelez is 94 percent compliant with this commitment.

“We have also pledged to reduce our global use of virgin plastic for rigid packaging by 25 percent and reduce virgin plastic use in overall plastic packaging by five percent in 2025. This goes hand-in-hand with our target use of 5 percent recycled content across plastic packaging globally by the same period,” Fabul explained.

Food packaging challenges

“PLASTIC is a very efficient, flexible material that ensures the integrity and the freshness of our food. it also increases the shelf life. if we use other packaging or other types of plastic, it would be possible that we may not be able to deliver the same kind of quality and freshness of our products,” he said, adding that Mondelez has been developing ways to use different types of plastics in order to make them recycle-ready and also to reduce their weight and the amount of plastic used in each product.

“it’s a challenge right now, there are many advocates who are pushing for a plastic ban, single-use plastic ban, and unreasonable EPR [extended producers’ responsibility] schemes. We need to do our part in ensuring that the negative environmental impact that our company makes is mitigated through better packaging materials and investing in recycling infrastructure,” Fabul stressed.

Sustainable futures platform

FABUL also revealed that the company launched its own sustainable futures platform which will incubate finance and build partnerships in the impact investment space through co-funded climate projects. With the new social venture fund, the company aims to partner with like-minded investors, increase its impact in the world, and support self-sustaining projects.

“locally, we’ve started exploring this platform through our project with them and together we are recovering and recycling 40,000 kilos of postconsumer plastic waste and converting these into other usable items like art crafts, benches, tables, etc. We don’t have all the answers but we do know that alone, we cannot achieve significant progress in the fight against systemic issues like climate change,” he said.

“Sustainable futures is our first foray into impact investing and gives us the opportunity to work with others in supporting the environment and social projects that can help drive meaningful and long-term change. Mondelez international is committed to doing business the right way. We have clear plans for our environmental, social, and government programs by creating a future with both people and the planet. We call this sustainable snacking,” Fabul concluded.