Post by account_disabled on Feb 22, 2024 7:59:00 GMT
Earlier this year, Danone became the first publicly traded company to become a “ company with a mission ,” a new type of corporation created by a 2019 French law. The pioneering government structure will see the food giant officially enshrine environmental and social objectives alongside business objectives in its statutes. GreenBiz 's Cecilia Keating comments that Danone , founded more than a century ago and famous for being declared a heritage site of national importance by the French government in 2005, has long prided itself on being a purpose-driven company. Its new status is the latest in a series of steps the company has taken to boost its environmental, social and governance (ESG) activities as it works toward a much-publicized goal of becoming one of the first multinationals certified as B Corps. Agriculture, the focus Eric Soubeiran, the company's vice president of nature and water cycle, explained that the company's move away from intensive agriculture is at the core of its new sustainability mission . Danone, which owns a range of household brands such as Volvic, Evian, Actimel, Alpro and Activia, is first and foremost a dairy company. If you really want to achieve sustainability in a company, you need to know your business well. For a food company, that means knowing how and where ingredients are sourced, what customers want, and understanding where direct and indirect carbon emissions are coming from.
Specifically, when you look at Danone, 60% of our carbon footprint comes from agriculture; 89% of our water footprint comes from agriculture. Sustainability begins with knowing your Scope 3 (value chain emissions). It is looking at the problem head-on and dismantling it piece by piece. That is why it is very important for us to have an opinion on the agricultural model we want. Eric Soubeiran, vice president Bulgaria Mobile Number List of nature and water cycle at Danone. That's why the company is working with farmers around the world to adopt a regenerative approach to agriculture that promotes healthier soil and ecosystems, better water management, and greater seed and crop diversity. Danone is training farmers in France to adopt new techniques to reach the goal of making agriculture in the country 100% regenerative by 2025. And to encourage the approach beyond its supply chain. He recently founded the One Planet Business for Biodiversity (OP2B) initiative , a cross-sector effort to improve the private sector's approach to biodiversity. It is very clear in Danone's vision that the food system is broken .
The activities established in the "green revolution" of the 1970s have intensified agricultural practices to a point where we have created a situation where food has become a commodity. And, by definition, a commodity has no value or very limited value. This is why we (as an industry) focus on volume, not quality, and how we have reached a point where we accept the fact that 30% of all food produced in the world is wasted. Eric Soubeiran, vice president of nature and water cycle at Danone. The transition from intensive agriculture, he stressed, can not only prevent the loss of wild species, create better working conditions for farmers and livestock, end monocultures and protect local ecosystems, but is also a lever that Danone must pull if it wants to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by mid-century in line with global climate goals. Soubeiran has experience disrupting what he calls “linearized” food chains and shaping them to be more sustainable. In a previous role at Danone, he managed the company's milk supply during the period when France liberalized its previously tightly controlled milk market.