I’m just going to say it: I have the best job at Kellogg Company.
As the Chief Sustainability Officer for Kellogg, I’m part of the Corporate Affairs team that are advocates internally and externally for Kellogg’s® Better Days global commitment to help end hunger and create Better Days for 3 billion people by the end of 2030.
Just think about this for a moment – 3 BILLION lives touched through our foods, our brands and our employees. Every time someone grabs a bowl of Frosties for dinner or brings a Pringles can to their football tailgate, they are supporting a company that is aligned to their values.
To achieve this ambitious goal, we’re working with colleagues across the company to address the important and interconnected issues of food security, climate resiliency and wellbeing for people, communities and the planet. I’m first to admit that these lofty topics are very difficult to tackle. Where and how should we start?
Through our Better Days commitments, we’ve prioritized our actions to where we can have the biggest benefit for communities and the planet. Over the coming years, we are:
- strengthening communities by supporting 1 million farmers, especially women smallholders,
- conserving natural resources all along our value chain,
- creating resilient and responsible supply chains,
- sharing our foods in packaging that is recyclable, reusable or compostable;
- and reducing global food loss and waste.
And we are bursting with company pride about how much progress we’ve already made.
- Kellogg has supported 329,000 farmers around the world with climate-smart agriculture practices that increase yields, livelihoods and climate resiliency. Learn more about our programs in Mexico, India, and Ghana by reading these other Social K articles.
- We are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our operations by 45 percent and are making tremendous progress – take a look at how renewable energy has exploded across Kellogg operations globally. In the last 10 years alone, we reduced greenhouse gas emissions to the equivalent of taking 317 million miles off the road.
- We’re also reducing greenhouse (GHG) emissions with our suppliers by 15 percent and we are proud to share that we’ve engaged 76% of our suppliers1 to disclose their emissions.
In addition to these core topics, Kellogg is prioritizing like never before to ensure we have a positive impact on the business and planet. This means we are looking for big reductions in things like water use (30%) in high risk areas and driving continuous improvement in our agricultural supply chains that are most material to our bottom AND top line.
Similarly, we are laser focused on reducing organic waste, including food waste, across our facilities by 50 percent. We’re already down 12%2 - which saves us money and is a key topic for our retailers and other stakeholders;
And we are working toward 100 percent reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging (by volume) by the end of 2025 – a key strategic priority which we are executing while supporting our push to win with occasions.
While we’re proud of our accomplishments, there is much more work to do. That’s why we will continue to forge partnerships – with our colleagues, supplier partners, customers, government leaders, NGOs, people who enjoy our foods and others – to improve lives and the planet we all share.
You can learn more about how we’re nurturing our planet here and in our latest Corporate Responsibility Report.
Kellogg Note: Our next-generation Kellogg’s® Better Days commitments for sustainability replace our current Global Sustainability commitments that sunset at the end of 2019. We’ll issue a final report on our Global Sustainability commitments in our 2019/2020 Corporate Responsibility Report.
1. In-scope, by spend
2. From a 2016 baseline