Mondelēz 2022 Snacking Made Right Report: Water & Waste, by @accesswire

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / September 26, 2023 / Mondelēz International

Mondelēz 2022 Snacking Made Right Report

Water
We depend on water to make our much-loved snacks and aim to use this precious natural resource responsibly. To this end, we aim to reduce our water use as much as possible and support initiatives throughout the value chain to conserve water.

Our Goal Progress: 14% Reduction
In 2022, we achieved an approximately 14% reduction in water usage at priority sites in areas where water is most scarce. Our goal is to reduce absolute water usage in priority sites by 10% by 2025 (vs. 2018).¹

Working Together at a Local Level
Responsible water use cannot be tackled at a remote, global level - it involves collective action on the ground, locally. So we are focusing on local and regional stakeholder engagements and community collaborations to broaden impact.

Reducing our Water Use
Around the world, water is increasingly under pressure due to global population growth, industrialization, and climate change, and we are focusing on playing our part in looking after this precious resource by seeking to reduce water use as muchm as possible.

In 2021, we updated our list of priority sites using the Aqueduct tool from World Resources Institute and changed our water scarcity threshold. This led to an increased number of priority sites: from 27 during the 2013-2020 cycle to 48 during the current 2018-2025 cycle.

In 2022, we reduced our absolute water use at priority sites by approximately 14% (vs. 2018).

Improving Water Use Across Europe
In Europe, we have made a number of improvements in our water use. In Spain, for example, we have enhanced waste-water treatment, to reduce pollutants in the discharge. We have also reduced water consumption through dry cleaning and automatic floor cleaners.

Reusing and Recycling More Water
Our factory in Fallingbostel, northern Germany, has increased its steam boiler condensate return ratio. This enables the factory to save 80,000m³ of water a year, reduce wastewater by 115,000m³, and save 395 metric tonnes of CO₂e. Our Besançon factory in Francehas implemented a recycling system, which is saving 6,800m³ of water every year.

Improving Cleaning Processes
Our Caramagna factory in Piedmont, Italy, has improved the Cleaning in Place (CIP) process. The water is recycled and the cleaning program optimized. This saves 35,000m³ of water per year. Our Kaunas factory in Lithuania improved its starch tray cleaning process, reducing water consumption by 3,000m³ a year.

Widening our Water Stewardship
In 2022, as the world's water stresses continued to increase, we sought to widen our positive impact by looking beyond our own facilities to assess wider water use along the value chain. We want to cover not just the use of water in our operations - for example to make our products and clean equipment - but also its use to irrigate the commodities that are important to our products.

We calculated our water footprint and identified that the majority of the water used in our value chain is in the production of raw materials. So after many years of our successful programs to reduce water consumption in our manufacturing operations, we are now expanding our approach and integrating our water stewardship methodology to key areas beyond our facilities.

We can then apply these learnings to the development of an end-to-end 2030 water stewardship strategy.

Reducing Water Consumption in Peru
At our factory in Lima, Peru, we have reduced water consumption by 21% against the 2018 baseline by improving the treated water recovery systems. We installed reverse osmosis equipment, which reduces dissolved minerals in the local water. This reduces the amount of water purging required, thereby cutting down on water use.

Saving Water in India
In India, we succeeded in saving approximately 29,000m³ of water in our manufacturing processes (vs. 2018). This was primarily achieved through technological advancement projects to improve water management, including permanent magnet technology, recovering up to 85% of condensation, and numerous other enhancements to reduce, recycle, and reuse water. We also harvested 98,000m³ of rainwater.

Waste
We strive to reduce waste as much as we can, to help the climate and the environment and to increase our operational efficiency. Above all, we focus on food waste - striving to eliminate it.

-25% Food waste reduction in internal manufacturing sites (metric tonnes) (vs. 2018)
-58% Food waste reduction in distribution (metric tonnes) (vs. 2018)

Our Goal Progress: 25% Reduction
In 2022, we reduced food waste in internal manufacturing sites by 25%, exceeding our goal of a 15% reduction by 2025 (vs. 2018).

This early delivery proves our focus on eliminating waste from our sites.

We also reduced food waste from distribution by 58%, exceeding our goal of a 50% reduction by 2025 (vs. 2018).

Striving to Eliminate Waste Once And For All
We see food waste as an opponent to be destroyed - it plays against all our sustainability efforts, adding to business and environmental costs, helping no one.

The initiatives to eliminate waste have to be robust and sustainable. At Mondelēz International, we have a clear governance of waste reduction globally.

We repeat the following steps:

Identify hot spots.
Deep dive to sites and focus on top losses in main production lines.
Focus on process capability improvement through the improvement of equipment, technology, system, people, and material.

Across the globe, our waste community is dedicated to:

Benchmarking and replicating Integrated Lean Six Sigma (IL6S) best practices to eliminate waste.
Leveraging the best engineering and digital solutions for process capability.
In-line measurement for real time process intervention, it's a key enabler for our vision.
Focus group to coach opportunity sites to eliminate waste.

Focusing on Eliminating Food Waste
We have been historically measuring and tackling manufacturing waste generation and disposal. In 2021, we decided to increase our focus on food waste. We believe this makes sense for a food company like us, especially considering that nearly a third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted.

Food waste increases the extraction of materials and growth of agriculture ingredients. This will ultimately not be put to good use as it increases the consumption of energy, water, and transportation. Indeed, food waste has an environmental impact that is 10x greater than packaging waste.

Helping to Stop Good Food Going to Waste
The best-before date (BBD) is misleading for many consumers, creating confusion with the use-by date, and therefore leading to many edible foods being thrown away. To take a stand against food waste, our Philadelphia brand has partnered with Too Good To Go - an innovative app that lets you buy food right before it goes to waste, in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden.

By printing the "Often Good After" logo next to the BBD on our Philadelphia packaging and creating ad hoc informative social media videos, we are helping to educate our consumers to first LOOK, SMELL, and TASTE before throwing away anything still good.

Too Good To Go - it's a great idea we're happy to be part of.

"Too Good To Go is active in several countries, where the topic is becoming more and more sensitive for consumers. We aim to replicate the activity also in other markets to spread the word!"
Vanessa Harrer
Sr Director, Marketing Philadelphia

Preventing, Reducing and Reusing Waste
Our VSA factory team in Brazil implemented a systematic approach to prevent, reduce, and reuse waste - reducing waste by 813 metric tonnes 2022 vs. 2021.

In China, our West Suzhou factory ran a process lost analysis on its wafer production line. The team increased process performance and reduced variability - significantly reducing waste on the line from 5.1% to 2.2%, contributing to 121 tons food waste reduction, which is equal to 10,000,000 wafer sticks!