At Lindt & Sprüngli we endeavor to take steps to reduce our environmental footprint, from upstream pre-production, to downstream post-production activities. Our business relies on a secure, steady supply of raw ingredients. We also strive to add value for customers while taking steps designed to reduce negative environmental impacts from the production of both our chocolate and its packaging.
We take special care to contribute to an intact environment by focusing on five key areas: biodiversity and ecosystems, climate, water, waste, and packaging. Our approach takes into account the entire value chain, addressing material risks and impacts, ranging from deforestation in our supply chain, to circularity in packaging material. Our Group-wide approach to addressing environmental topics in our direct operations is the environmental pillar in our operational excellence program, the Lindt Performance Way (LPW).
List of key actions taken, continued, and planned in 2024
Biodiversity and ecosystems (in upstream value chain)
- Implementation of measures to address deforestation in cocoa production, including farm mapping, farmer registration, risk assessments, data collection, supply chain traceability, farmer monitoring, and support for farmers to improve production and livelihoods
- Promotion of agroforestry systems for cocoa production by providing training, coaching, and resources like shade trees, along with farm monitoring
- Support of community forest conservation and restoration through landscape projects
- Continuation of sourcing other raw materials through defined certifications
Climate (in upstream value chain, own operations and downstream value chain)
- Consolidation of local decarbonization plans for all subsidiaries
- Definition of decarbonization plans for areas governed at Group level, including cocoa and other raw materials
- Key actions to reduce scope 1 and 2 emissions related to increasing the usage of renewable energy and improving energy efficiency
- Based on the foundations of our Roadmap to net-zero, we will develop a Climate Transition Plan in 2025
Water and waste (in own operations)
- Assessment of water withdrawal rates twice a year in all production facilities globally
- Continuous work to optimize processes and systems in an effort to reduce municipal water withdrawal
Packaging (in own operations)
- Implementation of the Sustainable Packaging Initiative
- Research and development and production testing
The Lindt Performance Way
The Lindt Performance Way (LPW) is deployed across our production companies and dedicated to continuous improvement in efficiency, effectiveness, and safety. Through it we seek to create value with fewer resources and zero loss processes.1 The LPW helps us identify process losses so we can introduce standards and systems to reduce and prevent them in the future.
Dedicated LPW pillars concentrate on increasing energy efficiency, reducing emissions, optimizing water management, and reducing material waste from our chocolate production. To reduce the environmental impact of our semi-finished product waste, we have been identifying, analyzing, and categorizing possible causes for the losses. We are making progress in measuring losses with an increasing granularity (by area, department, equipment, etc.), which helps us to rank and prioritize them. In addition, we have been launching projects to reduce semi-finished product losses. Our measures will be rolled out and are being integrated and engineered into new projects.
To address our safety risks, we are developing and sharpening our methodology to analyze and reduce risks, unsafe conditions and behaviors, and incidents. Data transparency improved with the roll-out of a global reporting solution. The LPW provides analysis tools and systems to do so with a standardized approach across our subsidiaries. Safety practices are shared within the internal safety community. In addition, our internal audit system has been further improved.
1This approach is based on the Lean and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) methodologies.