According to the U.N. Environment Programme, environmental sustainability involves making life choices that ensure an equal, if not better, way of life for future generations. Environmental sustainability aims to improve the quality of human life without putting unnecessary strain on the earth’s supporting ecosystems. It’s about creating an equilibrium between consumerist human culture and the living world. This can be achieved by living in a way that doesn’t waste or unnecessarily deplete natural resources. Environmental sustainability encompasses a responsible and balanced use of natural resources to meet the present needs without adversely compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Environmental sustainability is important because of how much energy, food, and human-made resources we use every day. Rapid population growth has resulted in increased farming and manufacturing, leading to more greenhouse gas emissions, unsustainable energy use, and deforestation. In other words, we need more energy and materials than ever before. Despite this, our planet can only provide so many resources before they begin to deplete. For this reason, businesses must step in and do their part. They have more power than any group of individuals, and they can help secure a livable future by investing in sustainable and responsible practices like reducing waste, using commercial clean energy, and entrenching fair business practices.
The Vision Of Net Zero Emission At Nestle
At Nestlé, the mission and vision towards environmental sustainability is properly structured, clearly communicated, and truly demonstrated in the activities of the organisation. As a broad corporate goal, Nestlé aims to reduce its carbon footprint and achieve net zero by 2050 at the latest. Nestlé’s holistic approach to managing impact on the environment involves joining the dots between climate change and related issues including water stewardship, biodiversity, and human rights.
Nestlé’s progress toward net zero emissions saw its renewable electricity sourced in all manufacturing sites un 2023 increase to 91.9% from 50.5% in 2020. By 2025, Nestlé aims to source 100% renewable electricity across all its sites globally.
Nestlé takes a science-based approach to lower emissions across its value chain and helps address the impacts of climate change on natural ecosystems, communities, and food systems. Nestlé Nigeria also works closely with farmers and the communities they serve to help increase the uptake of regenerative agricultural practices.
Climate change is one of society’s greatest challenges. It is also one of the greatest risks to the future of business; hence, limiting its severity and impacts requires all stakeholders to act with urgency.
The majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from value chain (95%), activities like land use and farming. That’s why Nestlé is working with partners throughout the value chain to scale up activities such as regenerative farming to significantly reduce its GHG emissions, even as the company continues to grow.
In 2020, the company published the Nestlé Net Zero Roadmap and since then it has transformed the business to start delivering reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across all three Scopes of Nestlé’s activities. Nestlé have developed two main strategic approaches that will help tackle the Scope 3 emissions. The Nestlé Forest Positive strategy aims to conserve and restore forests and natural habitats while the Nestlé Agriculture Framework sets out a vision for a more regenerative food and farming system.
Another key objective is Net zero by 2050 which is to be achieved in 3 phases: 20 % emissions reduction by 2025; 50 % emissions reduction by 2030 and Net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest.
Promoting Regenerative Agriculture
To achieve net zero emissions, there is a need to reduce emissions throughout the entire business and supply chains. Nestlé collaborates with suppliers, farmers. and communities to increase the use of regenerative agricultural practices. Nestlé is also investing in sustainable logistics, packaging and manufacturing activities, and reducing the risk of deforestation.
Natural climate solutions within the supply chain will form a significant part of the organisation’s decarbonization pathway, removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. These removal projects take place in the landscapes where the company sources for raw materials and helps restore forests, wetlands and peatlands. The company’s projects can also help generate additional benefits for communities and protect biodiversity and natural ecosystems. The Net Zero Roadmap shows that nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, so addressing these is essential to achieving these objectives. Nestlé is supporting farmers and food producers to be part of this transformation by scaling regenerative agriculture, aiming to improve soil health, sequester carbon, support food security, restore water resources, and enable biodiversity.
Climate Advocacy
Nestlé works with different partners to undertake climate advocacy and make a positive difference. This forms a critical part of delivering against the Net Zero Roadmap, helping to create the right frameworks and conditions for efforts to reduce emissions. All of Nestlé’s advocacy activities on climate align with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement. This includes work related to multi-stakeholder and business-only coalitions and trade associations. As set out in Nestlé’s Net Zero Roadmap, the organisation will continue to advocate for ambitious government policies and private-sector leadership to ensure all sectors move more quickly towards rapid and sustained reductions in carbon emissions.
Advocacy priorities includes: Encouraging more regenerative forms of agricultural production, ending deforestation risk and supporting forest positive restoration, enabling more sustainable logistics, Supporting the rollout of renewable electricity and energy, improving consumer communications and claims, advocating for higher ambitions from countries and companies and fair and clear rules for target setting and reporting progress. In addition, Nestlé supports various multi-sector efforts aimed at increasing the pace of decarbonization at a multi-lateral and national level.
Actions Beyond Words
To work towards its vision of a waste-free future, Nestlé Nigeria takes necessary actions to promote behavioral changes, and to build a circular ecosystem in waste management, starting from the company’s employees and extending to the communities closest to its operations and to a wider audience across Nigeria.
With a strong commitment to help protect, renew, and restore the environment, the company is implementing many initiatives promoting Environmental Sustainability.
In 2022, Nestlé Nigeria launched her employee plastics collection scheme, which inspires staff to protect the environment and combat plastic pollution by inculcating the habit of sorting wastes at source and recycling for sustainable environmental management. Through the scheme, employees return all plastic materials, not limited to the company’s brands, and earn points culminating in exciting rewards and management recognition.
Over the years, the company has partnered with the Lagos Business School Sustainability Centre on the “Advancing Nutrition, Health and Environmental Awareness” through the media training, which equips journalists to effectively communicate and educate the Nigerian populace on global best practices and lifestyle choices that impact everyday living and carry out fact-based reporting on nutrition, health, wellness, the environment, climate change, and corporate sustainability practices.
Catching Them Young
Nestlé has also extended her education campaign to the younger generations through the Sustainability Training for Kids, which enables children to imbibe a sustainability mindset from an early age, thereby preparing them to become better stewards of the planet. The training implemented in collaboration with the International Climate Change Development Initiative (ICCDI), furnishes children with information on waste management, introduces them to the conversion of waste to useful items, and encourages them to adopt positive behavioral changes to enhance environmental sustainability. The children are also taught sorting of waste at source with the donation of segregated bins to participating schools.
In Nigeria where we have a defective waste collection system, poorly managed waste ends up in waterways and clogs drainage, exacerbating the environmental hazards, including flooding which we are increasingly experiencing due to the effects of climate change.
Data shows that Nigeria generates more than 32 million tons of waste per year with Lagos alone producing about 10,000 metric tons of waste daily. Addressing the plastic waste challenge requires behavior change from all and Nestlé believes that there is no better place to start than from within. Nestlé Nigeria is therefore collaborating internally and with external stakeholders to address the waste challenge in line with the company’s global vision that none of its post-consumer packaging waste ends up in waterways or as litter in the environment
.
Marking World Clean-Up Day,
The World Clean-Up Day commemorated annually in September provides a platform for Nestlé’s employees to help promote awareness, of environmentally sound waste management practices for a clean, safe, and sustainable planet. Every year, volunteers under Nestlé Cares, the company’s global employee volunteering initiative, collaborate with the Africa Clean-Up Initiative (ACI), an NGO passionate about raising environmentally responsible citizens, for cleanup, sensitization, and advocacy on Environmental Sustainability.
This year, over 400 Nestlé employees joined the campaign by visiting twelve markets across the country. The cleanup exercise executed in Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, Sagamu, Ibadan, Jos, Abuja, Awka, Ota, Agbara, Enugu and Abaji, was powered by Maggi, one of Nestlé’s leading brands.
Speaking, Nestlé Nigeria’s Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Manager, Victoria Uwadoka, said, “At Nestlé, we are taking concrete actions to protect, renew and restore the environment every day. We are conscious that indiscriminate waste disposal coupled with limited recovery services aggravates the waste crisis. We also recognize that creating awareness through advocacy is necessary on our journey towards a waste-free future.
“Our priorities. therefore, include improving post-consumption plastic waste management by motivating behavioral changes and creating an efficient recovery system in collaboration with other industry and community stakeholders. We are also accelerating sustainability education through our employees, the media, our communities, and children in our Nestlé for Healthier Kids beneficiary schools. The market cleanup exercises are one of the ways we have sustained our efforts of improving our environment over the past five years.”
According to Dr. Alexander Akhigbe, Founder/CEO of African Clean-Up Initiative, “Participating in cleanup exercises is a great way to get involved and make a difference in keeping our environment clean and healthy for everyone. At African Clean-Up Initiative, we are passionate about raising environmentally responsible citizens and communities, working for the highest good of the planet.
“For this year’s exercise, we ensured the proper management of over 6,660kg of solid waste and 79kg of recyclables collected across all the locations, so that they do not end up back in the environment. We are honored to be working with Nestlé Nigeria as her implementing partners for this year’s event.” Comrade Aremu Komolafe, member of the Ojuwoye market committee, Mushin, Lagos state expressed his pleasure with volunteers from Nestlé Nigeria who joined the traders and market leaders to clean up the popular market in Southwest Nigeria. According to him, with the significant amount of waste generated daily due to the large number of visitors and traders buying and selling, the burden of keeping the market clean is huge. “To mitigate the situation, every Thursday is designated by the Lagos state government for market cleanup and sensitisation of shop and stall owners on the need for proper waste disposal.” He said that the cleanup initiative by Nestlé Nigeria would support these environmental sanitation efforts.
Nestlé Nigeria is a leading member of the Food and Beverage Recycling Alliance (FBRA), an Industry collaboration aimed at driving post-consumption waste management and recycling. Volunteers from the company also joined the FBRA- led cleanup initiatives for World Clean-Up Day.
Through the Nestlé Cares platform, employees have the opportunity to give back to society, impacting individuals and families, communities, and the environment, by volunteering their time, resources, and talents. The company says it will continue to play its part to ensure a cleaner and healthier environment across its operating locations, helping to create a more sustainable world.
Marking World Environment Day 2024
To commemorate World Environment Day 2024, Nestlé Nigeria employees under the global employee volunteer platform, Nestlé Cares, joined forces with volunteers from Convention for Business Integrity Innovations Nigeria Limited (CBiIL) to plant 1,000 trees at the Nestlé Dairy Demonstration Farm in the Paikon-Kore grazing reserve, located in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. This initiative aims to mitigate the impact of adverse weather conditions on the farm and enhance climate resilience. For context; one tree can sequester about 20kg of carbon dioxide/annum: Planting 1,000 trees contributes to Nestlé’s broader global mission of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050.
Since its launch in Nigeria in 2019, Nestlé Cares has provided a platform for employees to give back to society by donating their time and talents to make a positive impact on individuals and families, on communities and the environment. Nestlé employees have lived out their passion for caring for their communities and the planet through various projects including beach cleanup exercises, orphanage outreaches, market cleanup activities and mentorship programs for youth. The tree planting is further demonstration of their commitment to building a sustainable future for all.
Trees play a pivotal role as natural carbon sinks with the capacity to absorb carbon dioxide/annum, hence they actively contribute to carbon sequestration. Planting 1,000 trees within the dairy demonstration farm therefore serves a dual purpose: fortify ecosystem resilience and eventually act as effective windbreakers, mitigating the impact of adverse weather conditions on the farm and safeguarding the well-being of the animals. This is aligned with the World Environment Day 2024 theme of land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience, while contributing to Nestlé’s broader global climate mission. During the tree-planting ceremony, Victoria Uwadoka, Corporate Communications, Public Affairs, and Sustainability Lead at Nestlé Nigeria, highlighted the significance of the event, stating, “Every year, hundreds of Nestlé employees from around the country generously donate their time and talents to activities that positively impact local communities and the planet. By planting a thousand trees today, we are collectively demonstrating our commitment to climate action, both as individuals and as one Nestlé. This marks the beginning of more ambitious tree-planting campaigns as we accelerate action towards improving climate change resilience within our communities. We are grateful to have volunteers from the implementation partner of our dairy development program, CBiIL as well as representatives from the Department of Animal Husbandry Services of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) planting trees with us here today.”
Hajia Umma Abubakar, Director of Animal Husbandry Services Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), expressed her support, stating “We are thrilled to witness the collaborative efforts of Nestlé Nigeria and CBiIL, volunteers in planting 1,000 trees at the Nestlé Dairy Demonstration Farm in the Paikon-Kore grazing reserve. This initiative aligns perfectly with our vision for environmental conservation and demonstrates the power of collective action in building a sustainable future. The trees planted today will not only reduce the impact of climate change but will also be beneficial for the livestock. We commend Nestlé Nigeria and its partners for their commitment to climate action and look forward to further collaborations in environmental conservation”.
In furtherance to its commitment to inculcate young Nigerians with these values; Nestlé Nigeria trained no fewer than 137 children across five primary schools in Lagos in environmental sustainability. The training, themed ‘Sustainability Training for Kids’ was aimed at providing children with knowledge about climate change by instilling a sense of environmental responsibility at an early age, thereby nurturing a generation that will actively contribute to a more sustainable future.
The training was organised with the International Climate Change Development Initiative (ICCDI) and Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB), expressing the commitment to strengthen the collaboration in a bid to raise a healthier generation. Also, the founder of ICCDI, Olumide Idowu, described the training as a seed sown that will grow to help the children become aware of the healthiness of their environment. “In partnership with Nestlé Nigeria, we have trained and instilled responsibility and awareness in children about environmental impact. In her speech, the Special Adviser to the Governor of Lagos State on circular economy, Mrs. Titi Oshodi, harped on the importance of the health and well-being of the children, commending organisation for the training.
Nestlé Nigeria has consistently been at the forefront of environmental protection and sustainability, collaborating with relevant stakeholders to safeguard the climate for future generations. Actions include caring for water, achieving plastics neutrality, transitioning to green energy, and promoting regenerative agriculture.