The Club was privileged to have Cheryl Allen, Head of Sustainability - Confectionary (Europe), from Nestle explaining what the term ‘sustainability’ actually means in the context of business decisions. Cheryl started off by explaining that ‘sustainability’ wasn’t some altruistic, fashionable sop. Whilst it was essential to take steps to combat climate change, loss of biodiversity, and all the other environmental problems that face the world today, actions taken to ameliorate these had to make business sense.
She then went on to demonstrate some of the ways in which Nestle was approaching the issue. Firstly it was important that organizations started ant the end point and then worked back down the supply chain to ensure that incremental improvements were made at every stage.
In York , for example, at the manufacturing stage, work was being done to move away from fossil fuels and into renewables. Much research was going into packaging to improve recycling and reduce excess material. As an example Cheryl explained that in shifting from a 2-layer paper wrapper for Kit-Kat to a thin-film plastic one, 1 billion pieces of packaging had been saved.
Turning to suppliers, Cheryl showed two case studies; one in West Africa with cocoa farmers, and the other with milk producers in South-West Scotland. In the former, farmers were being encouraged to avoid clearing new areas of forest for crop production by improving the techniques used on their existing land and ensuring that there was traceability from source to manufacture. Alongside this Nestle was investing in social change through education, and by empowering women to diversify family income streams.
In Ayrshire Nestle has been working with a dairy farming cooperative for the last 21 years. More recently incentives have included planting hedgerows, reducing waste run-off into rivers, and encouraging no-tilling of pasture land. New monitoring techniques are improving animal welfare. Socially, farmers are encouraged to run educational visits for school children so that the next generation will start to become aware of sustainability issues.
Cheryl’s talk was most stimulating and extremely informative on a subject of global concern. The interest generated was well demonstrated by the number of Rotarians who wished to carry on the conversation with Cheryl after the meeting.
Mike Fieldsend
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