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Source key raw materials and commodities sustainably to an independent standard by 2020. We will raise awareness of sustainably sourced products.
ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE SOURCING
Woolworths Group is committed to responsible sourcing, protecting people and reducing our impact on the planet. Our customers expect us to operate in an ethical and sustainable manner, particularly for high risk commodities, including tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar, fish and seafood.
Our customers want more sustainable products and more independently certified products. In FY17, our own brand products sold contained 28,883 tonnes of sustainably certified coffee, chocolate and sugar. We will continue to expand our certified sustainable offering in FY18, which in Australia will include the launch of our sustainably certified own brand tea range, and all of our Christmas and Easter chocolate will be sustainably certified. We are committed to achieving our target to ‘Source key raw materials and commodities sustainably to an independent standard by 2020.’
We continue to raise awareness of sustainably sourced products through participation in initiatives such as the Good Egg Guide and Fairtrade Fortnight. We have developed our Responsible Sourcing Discovery webpage to share our sustainably sourced products with our customers.
SUSTAINABLE FISH AND SEAFOOD
During FY17 Woolworths sourced 9,029 tonnes of fish and seafood from certified farms and fisheries. Third party certifications recognised by Woolworths are the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), Best Aquaculture Practice (BAP) and Global GAP. We have started to label our own brand products with certification eco-labels helping our customers to identify products from third party certified sources.
Where we are unable to source certified product, Woolworths has committed to independently verifying the fishery or farm. To do this we need to risk assess the source against a set of credible criteria. To achieve this by 2020, Woolworths has engaged with the Fisheries Research & Development Corporation. The framework we will adopt will be in line with the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. For wild-capture fisheries the assessment will look at stock, management and environmental impacts for which the methodology will be publicly available to provide transparency with our customers and stakeholders.
WORKING WITH INDUSTRY AND INFLUENTIAL STAKEHOLDERS – FAIRTRADE MACRO COFFEE
Our Macro Organic Coffee is Fairtrade certified, and has an authentic and direct link to provenance. All coffee is sourced through the network of small community growers producing through the Cooperative Coopchebi in central Peru, an area with abundant forests and birdlife. The growers get a fair price for a quality product and support for sustainable farming practices such that the small communities can produce quality coffee in generations to come.
We understand the importance of protecting our forests and are working with numerous organisations to achieve net zero supply chain deforestation for our own brand products. We are working through our supply chain to identify the high impact commodities and subsequently source them from independently-certified sustainable supply chains.
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Achieve net zero supply chain deforestation for ‘high-impact’ commodities in our own brand products, such as palm oil, timber, pulp and paper, and packaging.
NET ZERO DEFORESTATION
We are a proud member of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), and as such we are a signatory to the CGF Deforestation Resolution of 2010 for achieving net zero deforestation by 2020. To achieve this, we will sustainably source the relevant high-impact commodities such as palm oil, timber, pulp and paper, and packaging. We are working towards a 2020 target of sourcing these products from independently certified sustainable supply chains 1.
1 Where this is not feasible, we will consider credible offsetting schemes.
PALM OIL
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a multi-stakeholder organisation comprising retailers, manufacturers, palm oil producers, traders and non‑government organisations. It sets global standards for palm oil production and manages a certification scheme. In FY17, all of the palm oil used in our own brand food products support the production of RSPO‑certified sustainable palm oil. We are working towards ensuring that all of the palm oil used in our own brand formulated non-food products meets third party independent certification requirements by 2020 1.
1 Where this is not feasible, we will consider credible offsetting schemes.
PAPER, PULP AND TIMBER
We are working towards a 2020 target of sourcing all products containing paper, pulp and timber from independently certified sustainable supply chains. Currently, over 70% of our products containing these materials come from sources certified by either the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). All of our own brand toilet paper, tissues and paper towel are FSC certified.
CATALOGUES AND PAPER
All of the paper used for the nearly 880 million catalogues we produced during FY17 came from sustainable sources. Within the rest of our business, we procured more than 147,000 reams of paper for office use during FY17, all of it FSC‑certified. This represents a more than 30% reduction in paper use compared to FY16.
ZERO DEFORESTATION PACKAGING
Our next step is to stretch beyond products and to continue our zero deforestation practices with our packaging. To do this we are working with our supply chains to expand the sourcing of certified sustainable and recycled packaging options.
