7.2.2 Climate & circularity

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reductions

People worldwide are becoming more aware of the environmental impacts of food production and their own dietary choices. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), global feed production represents 45% of the carbon footprint of livestock products.

At Nutreco, the most significant part of our environmental impact is in the supply-side of our business model and activities; by working together with partners at every stage of the value chain we can reduce our environmental impact.

Understanding our impact is an essential part of reducing our carbon footprint, as it enables us to track performance against our targets. Carbon footprinting is a fundamental part of building a robust and science-based environmental strategy.

Nutreco has reported on the carbon footprint of its operations since 2009. In our Vision 2020, we made a bold commitment to halve the footprint of our operations by 2020, looking at carbon credits to help achieve this ambition. Looking ahead to 2025, we’re committed to reducing our carbon emission footprint, including significant reductions in our energy usage and the footprint of our procurement activities. We will also be monitoring our impact downstream at the farm through life cycle assessments (LCAs). This will enable us to track other environmental impacts at the farm, such as nitrogen and phosphorous emissions.

As of 2020, Nutreco began implementing LCA tools and analysis capacity within each division, with common methodology and communication approaches aligning across the company.

This effort will lead to systematic footprinting of our products and formulations, while beginning a gradual implementation of comparative footprints of farm scenarios once validation is complete for new and existing products and services, and an integration of footprints within procurement requirements.

In addition, Nutreco committed to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in March 2020, to ensure that we are setting meaningful goals that are in line with the latest in climate science and will help us get ready for a lower- carbon future.

We will set a well below 2° Celsius climate change by submitting to the SBTi, an absolute reduction target for Scope 1 & 2 emissions – those that we directly create through our operations or are created through the energy we purchase. We’ll do this by focusing on energy reduction and renewable energy, making up the difference through the purchase of green electricity.

We will set a well-below 2° Celsius climate change economic intensity reduction target for our Scope 3 emissions from a 2018 baseline by 2030. Scope 3 emissions are those created indirectly through our purchasing and usage of external services, yet that are dominated by the impact of crop production and land use change. To meet our Scope 3 goal, we will continue working on deforestation-free sourcing, developing and using novel ingredients, and cooperating with stakeholders to reduce the footprint of commodities.

We expect SBTi to accept and publish our proposed targets by the end of the first-quarter of 2021.