Close to a third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted. That’s why we’re focused on key actions across our Company-owned manufacturing sites to reduce and eliminate food waste.
First, we have in place effective governance procedures that help us identify wastage hot spots and focus on the biggest losses incurred during production. This enables us to create ever-better process capabilities for reduction of waste.
We then apply proven Lean Six Sigma practices, using leading engineering and digital solutions. We continually track performance, enabling us to intervene quickly when corrective actions are needed. Within our manufacturing teams, we are continuously working to identify opportunities and course correct our practices.
2023 IN REVIEW
During the last year, we focused our key waste-related sustainability initiatives on making our production lines more efficient. We tracked waste trends every month, analyzing them to identify the best opportunities for reduction across all processes and geographies.
In addition to our 2025 goal of reducing food waste in internal manufacturing by approximately 15% (compared to our 2018 baseline) and individual goals across our regions, our businesses and sites keep us focused on continuous improvement in areas like waste generated, waste treated and waste to landfill. While our primary focus is on food waste, we also analyzed all our waste management throughout the year to identify and act on all major opportunities.
In 2023, this approach drove down food waste at our manufacturing sites by about (28)%– well ahead of our 2025 goal of approximately 15%. We also delivered about a (69)% reduction in food waste from distribution, surpassing our approximately 50% goal for 2025 (against our 2018 baseline).
For instance, our Sri-City plant in India initiated a multi-pronged approach with a tight governance mechanism to significantly reduce food waste. The approach leveraged IL6S methodology to identify waste generation sources and involved a loss analysis to improve process performance with reduced variability.
Our Richmond bakery plant in the U.S. achieved food waste reduction driven by more than 65 productivity projects that contributed to the improvement in waste reduction.
In Brazil, our Curitiba plant drove multiple scrap reduction and compost reprocessing flow optimization projects which have together resulted in a reduction of more than hundreds of metric tonnes of food waste compared to previous year. Also in Brazil, our Recife plant focused on scrap reduction in the wafer and cookie lines delivering waste reduction.
STOPPING GOOD FOOD GOING TO WASTE
In 2023, our Philadelphia brand partnered with the innovative Too Good To Go app to help shoppers in Austria, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland buy food right before it goes to waste. We identified an opportunity and worked together to address the uncertainty often caused by the best-before date (BBD), printing the “Often Good After” logo on our packaging.
We also co-created social media videos in Germany encouraging people to LOOK, SMELL, TASTE before throwing away anything unnecessarily.
In Sweden, we’re also donating surplus products to Matmissionen Supermarkets, which are then sold at a reduced price to economically vulnerable consumers.
FUTURE OUTLOOK
At Mondelēz International, we continue our path towards food waste elimination by leveraging our business programs in food waste prevention and reduction with key collaborators. This focused effort has allowed us to achieve and exceed in 2023 our 2025 goal.
View the full 2023 Snacking Made Right Report
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