‘Big Food’ and Nestlé’s Even Bigger Responsibility

When a company uses its size and reach to create shared value, it can change the world

A business can’t thrive for 150 years without being nimble, innovative and responsive, which is why Nestlé’s sesquicentennial this year is an important milestone for us.

Today, Nestlé is a world away from that company founded in 1866 as Europe’s first condensed milk factory. However, the foundation laid in those early years has sustained Nestlé and helped us become a global leader committed to health, wellness and nutrition across our more than 2,000 brands.

We realize that being a company of our size invites additional scrutiny — especially at a time when being in the “Big Food” club can be seen as a negative rather than a positive. Indeed, a clear cultural shift has brought unprecedented focus on every aspect of the food we eat and the beverages we drink. Food producers like us are listening and acting.

Nestlé USA welcomes discerning consumers to take a closer look at what we’re doing. Last month, I joined others from the food industry on an Aspen Ideas Festival panel to discuss the challenges we all face as well as the opportunities before us.

Though any business or publicly traded company must consider revenue, Nestlé operates under the premise that our ability to create value for our shareholders is dependent on the value we create for society. We are the largest food and beverage company in the world, and as such, the changes we make in how we make food, run our factories or manage our supply lines can actually change the world.

Doing so means holding ourselves to the highest standard, whether it’s food quality, environmental sustainability or our social impact. Some of Nestlé’s priorities:

Nutrition, Health and Wellness. We are committed to providing more choices to meet the nutrition, health and wellness needs of every member of the family at every stage of life. In 2015 alone, Nestlé reformulated 1,222 food and pet products to achieve various goals like reducing sodium, sugar, and trans fat. We also removed artificial flavors from 500 products to meet consumer demand. Nestlé stands apart from the industry in supporting the voluntary sodium reduction guidelines issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Environmental Sustainability. Nestlé was again a top performer in the food industry in the 2015 Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which measures the performance of the world’s sustainability leaders. There are many reasons for this recognition, but among them is our ambitious push to achieve zero waste at our U.S. factories. In 2015, 35 Nestlé factories — 40% of our total in the U.S. — achieved zero waste to landfill. Our target for the year 2020: 100%. Nestlé also has focused on water waste and is reducing, reusing and recycling this precious resource across our business. Our U.S. factories are withdrawing 10% less water per ton of product than they did five years ago.

Social impact. Global changes in areas such as human rights, food sourcing and workplace conditions often occur because a company of our size functions with values-based core principles. Social responsibility is a vast area of focus for us, encompassing everything from paid parental leave (eligible employees are granted 14 weeks) to assessing and addressing the human rights impacts of our supply chain. The Nestlé Cocoa Plan, for instance, is active in six countries and aims to improve the lives of cocoa farming communities and the quality of their crops. Similarly, in the U.S. market, we source 100% of the regular green coffee for our Nescafé products from verified sustainable coffee farmers.

These examples provide just a small window into who we are and what we’re achieving. See a more complete picture of our work and initiatives here.

Though the term “Big Food” might be pejorative to some people, Nestlé will work to build trust while striving to create the shared value I mentioned above. Not as a buzz phrase, but as a mission. And not as mere promises, but delivered as measurable progress against goals. We will responsibly embrace our size and use our reach to serve our customers and communities around the world. Doing so is the only way we can deliver the best products while ensuring that Nestlé will be around for another 150 years, or longer.