Kellogg has pledged to responsibly source its top 10 ingredients and materials by 2020, and validate compliance across all direct suppliers by 2015, as part of a series of new environmental commitments.
The top 10 ingredients include corn, wheat, rice, oats, potatoes, sugar (beets and cane), cocoa, palm oil, fruits and honey.
In its other responsible sourcing commitments, Kellogg says it will:
- Continue to provide resources and education to key agricultural suppliers, millers and farmers to help them increase their resilience to climate change; optimize their use of fertilizer inputs; reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their agricultural practices; optimize water use and enhance watershed quality; and improve soil health.
- Build programs to help small-scale farmers improve their livelihoods by adapting to climate change and improving their agronomic practices and business skills.
The company’s other new commitments focus on conserving natural resources. These include:
- Further reduce energy and GHG emissions by an additional 15 percent (per metric ton of food produced) from 2015 performance.
- Expand use of low-carbon energy in plants by 50 percent by 2020.
- Support watershed quality, implement water reuse projects in 25 percent of plants by 2020, and further reduce water use by an additional 15 percent (per metric ton of food produced) from 2015 performance.
- Increase to 30 percent the number of plants sending zero waste to landfill by 2016.
- Ensure that 100 percent of timber-based packaging continues to be either recycled or from certified sustainable sources, while implementing resource-efficient packaging, as measured by improved performance for recycled content, recyclability and food-to-package ratios.
In making its new environmental commitments, Kellogg joins several other food and beverage giants, including Coca-Cola, Danone, General Mills, and Mondelez International that have also made sustainable sourcing pledges over the past few months.