Rising to meet the challenges of achieving global sustainable development is expected to require all the major stakeholders around the world to work together. DuPont Nutrition & Health is among this group that aims to make a greater impact on the food and beverage industry value chain.
Since the beginning of 2017, DuPont Nutrition & Health has taken numerous actions to advance its global leadership role in sustainability. Last year, DuPont Nutrition & Health introduced its 2020 Sustainability Strategy, committing to use sustainably sourced and produced ingredients and innovative solutions to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 17 SDGs were adopted by the U.N. in 2015 to guide governments, businesses, civil society and people on how to contribute to a more sustainable world.
This month, DuPont Nutrition & Health entered a collaboration with the Confederation of Danish Industry (DI) and participated in a two-day "boot camp" on 17-18 April where 21 companies considered how they could take business actions to support the SDGs. Joined by other pioneering companies, DuPont Nutrition & Health received detailed hands-on assistance about how to create and capture business value through SDG business alignment and potentially launch new business models based on the SDGs.
"Sustainability is deeply integrated into the DuPont Nutrition & Health operating business model and innovation process, and the SDGs create shared goals that we can benchmark our work against," said Mikkel Thrane, Ph.D., global sustainability lead.
"Translating the general language of the SDGs into business goals is an important step toward creating SDG actions, and we see a great opportunity in doing this on a broad basis together with DI and a number of other world-leading companies."
The boot camp kicked off an 18-month program to ensure participating companies effectively embed the U.N. goals into their business strategies. DuPont Nutrition & Health was the only food ingredient company to participate in the boot camp. Perhaps the most important advice offered to the participating companies was to choose three or four of the SDGs where they could make a significant impact, rather than choosing more and making only modest improvements.
DuPont Nutrition & Health continues to work hand-in-hand with farmers to ensure they are sourcing raw materials in environmentally responsible ways, to create sustainable ingredients and food products, to assist food manufacturers by recommending environmentally safe production methods, and to participate in organizations promoting sustainable solutions that will achieve the SDGs.
In the coming months, DuPont Nutrition & Health expects to continue to expand its business focus on the SDGs and communicate progress being made with its seaweed management program, its manufacturing footprint and customer sustainability partnerships.
For more information about DuPont’s sustainability efforts, visit the DuPont Nutrition & Health website at http://www.danisco.com/sustainability/.