Other commitments

B-Corp Certification

In a world with so many challenges, we are convinced that companies should play a role by having a positive impact. But this impact must be measurable in an objective and trustable way.

Certified B Corporations are leaders of a global movement of people using business as a force for good. They meet the highest standards of overall social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability and aspire to use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.

B Corps are for profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

We are proud!

Ecotone (previously Wessanen) was the first international food company to be certified
in December 2019 with a score of 91.7 points.

The next certification will take place in 2022. In the meantime we are actively working on improving our positive impact on the different B Corp dimensions (governance, workers, environment, community, customers).

Carbon footprint

As climate change contributes directly to the erosion of biodiversity, we measure our emissions and implement actions to reduce them.

We are developing a strategy positioning towards carbon neutrality and presentation of various climate approaches for us with the help of EcoAct, European leader in climate and carbon strategy.

Climate change is one of the 5 major causes of biodiversity erosion.

Since 2017, we have been measuring our CO2 emissions annually on scopes 1, 2 and 3 and in 2019 we defined CO2 reduction targets based on the Paris Agreements* :

Scope 1 & 2: – 55% (absolute) CO2 by 2030 versus 2017
Scope 3: -43% (TCO2e/K€ intensity) CO2 on packaging and agricultural raw materials by 2030 versus 2017
To reach them, we have built an action plan :
100% renewable electricity in our offices and factories by 2022 (today 95%)
Progressive replacement of our production sites with Green Biogas
On Scope 3, we will work in co-construction with our stakeholders:
on agricultural practices in our supply chains to carry out reduction actions in line with biodiversity conservation.
on the packaging
on the manufacture of our products

*Paris agreement: limitation of climate change to 1.5°C by 2100 compared to the pre-industrial era (1790).

Key examples

95% renewable electricity

In 2019, Wessanen (and so now Ecotone) purchases 95% renewable electricity, a commitment made in 2012.

50% bio gas

Our Destination plant is using a large part of bio gas.

Nutrition

We believe that the Organic standard is the best way to make healthy products. It is our responsability and passion to put on the market products that will help consumers to have healthy diets. We believe that it is even more important to avoid an unhealthy diet than to avoid unhealthy products. Nevertheless, it is our job and passion to put on the market products that will help consumers to have heathy diets.

In order to do so we consider the Nutriscore of products. Nutriscore is a method which classifies products based on their nutritional profile (levels of energy sugar, fats, fibres,…) from A (good profile) to E (bad profile).

We aim at having a large part of our assortment classified as Nutriscore A, B or C. We measure it on all innovations.

KPI Nutriscore : 80% of Bjorg products are in ABC (to be calculated later on the other brands)

Packaging

Though packaging is essential to protect the product during transportation and shelf life, its environmental impact must be minimized.

Our packaging policy is based on the following principles:

Reduce weight

Recycle

Use renewable materials

Many Examples

Cap made from cane sugar

Bag size reduction

Replacement of PE film by paper and use of PLA (Polyactic acid) to seal the bags make them compostable

Stakeholders engagement

Cooperating with our ecosystem is not only necessary, it is vital. We interact on a daily basis with most of our stakeholders and take all opportunities to get their feedback to improve our performance and as a result, our relationship.
We collect feedback from our employees with the Great Place to work survey. This is a very practical way to measure the quality of the communication and the engagement of our people.
Our consumer care service does its utmost to answer all questions from consumers, we track the level of complaints but also the consumer care service level to ensure all contacts are answered in a short delay.
We have daily discussions with our Customers and measure our service quality level, as our key performance.

All Stakeholders engagement

	How we engage our stakeholders	Key topics discussed in 2020	Impact on strategy
Employees	Annual GPTW survey Quarterly town hall meetings to share the results Monthly newsletter Annual organic day	Protection measures against the COVID outbreak Biodiversity positioning	Development of home office
Consumers	Consumer care daily contacts Brand communication	Environment Packaging nutrition	Strategy on biodiversity preservation Sustainable packaging Reduction of sugar content
Customers	Participation in trade shows (Biofach, etc) Participation in customers working groups on sustainability	Climate action packaging	Sustainable packaging Climate reduction
Organic organisations	Member of national organic organization (Synabio, Bionext, Soil association, AOL, BOLW, Federbio)	Develop the organic market	Strategy on biodiversity preservation Grow % of organic sales
Suppliers	Day to day contact Suppliers technical visits Code of conduct partnership	Long term partnership	Suppliers engagement via the partnership contracts
NGOs	Fundation BBCie Ad hoc projects supported	Environment and health protection	Biodiversity preservation strategy Projects supported by the foundation
Experts	Collaboration with experts on issues (biodiversity, climate change, nutrition)	Environment and health protection	Biodiversity preservation strategy

Supply Chain Engagement

We cooperate on a daily basis with more than 600 suppliers (raw materials, packaging, finished goods). It is obvious that we cannot achieve our ambition on biodiversity and have a positive impact on the world around us without engaging many of them in this journey.

We first ask them to respect the fundamental rules of the ILO (International Labour Organisation) convention by signing our suppliers Code of Conduct. We also require for many of them to engage in Sedex.

To guarantee the quality and safety of our products, we defined the minimum requirements applicable to any Wessanen supplier, in our Product Quality Booklet. Our quality experts verify that the defined requirements are met.

We also engage in a specific partnership contract with some suppliers through which we create the conditions of a long term relationship with mutual engagement to have together a positive impact on our ecosystem.

See our PQB See our Code of Conduct

Sustainable Development Goals - SDGs

The world is facing many challenges: climate change, poverty, obesity, diabetes, inequalities, waste and many more.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were defined by the United Nations in 2015 as the key topics for Sustainable Development, as part of the 2030 agenda.

They represent the global society challenges. Each SDG is defined with specific objectives and targets which can be adopted by any organisation

Ecotone is fully committed to these SDGs with a focus on 2, 3, 5, 12 and 15.