Is Your Organisation’s Sustainability Program As Good As This?

The Fruits Of Nespresso’s Sustainability Program Revealed.

On the one-year anniversary of The Positive Cup, Nespresso’s 2020 sustainability strategy, Jean-Marc Duvoisin, CEO of Nestlé Nespresso, has announced that significant progress had been made towards improving the lives of thousands of coffee farmers.

The Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality Program was developed with the NGO the Rainforest Alliance to secure the supply of highest quality coffees, protect the environment and improve farmer welfare. Over 63000 farmers are now taking part in the program in 11 countries, benefiting from technical assistance, trainings, price premiums and investments in infrastructures.

Over the past two years Nespresso has been working with its partner TechnoServe to help rebuild the coffee sector in South Sudan, resulting in the country’s first-ever coffee exports in 2013, and its first non-oil export to Europe. Nespresso aims to produce a new rare coffee from South Sudan, while providing alternative sources of sustainable income to local farmers.

The fruits of the Nespresso AAA Program are already being felt, as Joseph Malish Thomas, a South Sudanese farmer, attests: “I have seen that there is great change within the community. We want to produce the right quality. People now have hope. We will be able to pay school fees for children and in the end develop the country.”

Nespresso aims to source 100 per cent of its coffee from its AAA Sustainable Quality Program by 2020. This depends heavily on the extension of the program into Kenya and Ethiopia, to support a more skilled, self-sufficient and sustainable farming community. In the last 12 months Nespresso and TechnoServe have provided training and technical assistance to over 10000 farmers, and will reach 50000 farmers by 2020.

Nespresso has also progressed with its agroforestry plan. The reintroduction of trees in coffee producing regions helps protect natural ecosystems, thereby strengthening coffee farms’ resilience to climate change and ensuring sustainable coffee production for the future. Around 130000 trees were planted in 2014 in Guatemala and Colombia as part of pilot programs. In the first half of 2015, approximately 200000 trees have been planted in Ethiopia and Guatemala, and another 300000 will be planted by the end of 2015 in Mexico and Colombia.

“The Rainforest Alliance has been working with Nespresso and the AAA Program since it was first created in 2003.  Together we have seen great achievements that have delivered tangible improvement to lives of coffee farmers, families and communities, as well as environmental and biodiversity benefits,” said Tensie Whelan, President of the Rainforest Alliance. “The progress being delivered by Nespresso, the Rainforest Alliance and Pur Projet through the agroforestry plan is building on that success, helping farmers to improve their resilience to the real and present threat that is climate change.  Working together we are showing that care for the environment and for coffee farmers is a fundamental part of supplying the highest quality coffee to Nespresso’s consumers around the world.”