Aroma of change

For mil­lions around the world, cof­fee is a com­fort­ing bev­er­age; a morn­ing pick-me-up or the ide­al accom­pa­ni­ment to a good book. For thou­sands of cof­fee farm­ers, how­ev­er, it’s a liveli­hood. Nespresso’s The Pos­i­tive Cup vision advo­cates a real­i­ty where cof­fee not only deliv­ers a moment of plea­sure, but also replen­ish­es wider social and envi­ron­men­tal resources, ensur­ing pro­duc­ers see cof­fee as a gate­way to a peace­ful and sus­tain­able liv­ing.

The back­drop for this vision was the 2015 Paris Cli­mate Agree­ment when the world made a unan­i­mous com­mit­ment to the Unit­ed Nation’s Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs). The over­ar­ch­ing aim was to end pover­ty, pro­tect the plan­et and ensure pros­per­i­ty for all. This was the con­clu­sion to then-UN sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Ban Ki Moon’s famous mes­sage: “We don’t have plan B because there is no plan­et B.”

Unlike the Mil­len­ni­um Devel­op­ment Goals, the SDGs direct­ly called busi­ness­es to action along­side gov­ern­ments and inter­na­tion­al agen­cies, as key stake­hold­ers in the con­sul­ta­tion process. This cat­a­lyst pro­pelled an evo­lu­tion of cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty to become the cen­tre of core busi­ness oper­a­tions.

Fol­low­ing this direc­tion, con­sul­tan­cy Earth Secu­ri­ty Group’s 2017 report out­lines a prac­ti­cal approach for glob­al busi­ness to iden­ti­fy the areas, met­rics and steps that are instru­men­tal to their sus­tain­able growth. This press­es organ­i­sa­tions to align their expan­sion to the ris­ing demands for social inclu­sion and envi­ron­men­tal sta­bil­i­ty, now defin­ing the geo­gra­phies in which they oper­ate along­side the wider SDGs. The chal­lenge out­lined is no easy feat, but requires busi­ness­es, gov­ern­ments and com­mu­ni­ties to work togeth­er, trans­lat­ing glob­al aspi­ra­tions into local real­i­ties.

Nespresso’s The Pos­i­tive Cup vision advo­cates a real­i­ty where cof­fee not only deliv­ers a moment of plea­sure, but also replen­ish­es wider social and envi­ron­men­tal resources

This holis­tic approach is nev­er far from the mind of Jerome Perez, glob­al head of sus­tain­abil­i­ty at Nespres­so. As a pre­mi­um cof­fee brand reliant on high-qual­i­ty cof­fee sourc­ing, there are two key pri­or­i­ties mov­ing for­ward. Ensur­ing cof­fee farm­ing is an eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable busi­ness for small­hold­ers, com­bined with the urgency to pro­tect bio-diver­si­ty and the ecosys­tems that guar­an­tee healthy cof­fee ter­roirs.

“Back in the 2000s when Nespres­so start­ed to grow tremen­dous­ly, we had to rethink our cof­fee-sourc­ing mod­el, to allow long-term com­mer­cial growth with evolv­ing socio-envi­ron­men­tal sys­tems,” says Mr Perez. This ignit­ed their part­ner­ship with Rain­for­est Alliance to design the Nespres­so AAA Sus­tain­able Qual­i­ty Pro­gram™. Focus­ing on Nespresso’s cof­fee-sourc­ing process, the scheme is anchored on long-term farmer rela­tion­ships and the adop­tion of sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices.

“This is to dri­ve up qual­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy for con­sumers, by pro­vid­ing a reli­able qual­i­ty of life for farm­ers in the sup­ply chain,” says Mr Perez. Now tens of thou­sands of pro­duc­ers across 12 key sourc­ing coun­tries, includ­ing many emerg­ing mar­kets, are part of this trans­for­ma­tive jour­ney.

Farm­ers in devel­op­ing coun­tries are vul­ner­a­ble to a myr­i­ad of chal­lenges, from cli­mate change and degra­da­tion to youth exo­dus and armed con­flict. Nespres­so under­stands this and is deter­mined to dilute this risk to their liveli­hoods. “We see our role as a dri­ving force to trans­form the sec­tor, to facil­i­tate inno­v­a­tive solu­tions and turn chal­lenges into new oppor­tu­ni­ties,” says Mr Perez. This phi­los­o­phy engen­dered Nespres­so in 2014 to part­ner with the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment and Fair­trade Inter­na­tion­al to launch the first retire­ment sav­ings plan for small­hold­er farms in Cal­das.

“What gives me sat­is­fac­tion is that this work takes real life into cups of cof­fee – our cus­tomers can direct­ly appre­ci­ate the pro­duc­tion of Cal­das cof­fee farm­ers with the lim­it­ed edi­tion Colom­bia Aguadas. I hope they under­stand what val­ue is behind each cup,” says Mr Perez.

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Nespresso’s cur­rent cam­paign, The Choic­es We Make, has the company’s approach at the heart of its mes­sage. It fea­tures a series of farm­ers’ sto­ries express­ing how the deci­sion to invest in a cof­fee facil­i­ty has opened the door to a world of oppor­tu­ni­ties. These per­son­al sto­ries are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the tens of thou­sands of AAA farm­ers instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing Nespresso’s high-qual­i­ty cof­fee.

Anoth­er less­er-known fact around pre­mi­um cof­fee-sourc­ing is that beans are more sus­tain­ably grown in the shade of trees. The shade not only com­ple­ments growth, but cap­tures car­bon, improves nutri­ents in the soil and con­serves water. In the long run, it also offers income diver­si­fi­ca­tion through tim­ber val­ue to farm­ers. “We believe in shade-grown cof­fee as a regen­er­a­tive mod­el and resilience asset for cof­fee grow­ers,” Mr Perez explains.

Hence the AAA Pro­gram pro­motes agro­forestry mod­els, plant­i­ng native trees in and around cof­fee farms. To enable the ampli­fi­ca­tion of the deploy­ment, Nespres­so has tak­en a dual approach with the pro­mo­tion of cli­mate “smart prac­tices” adop­tion, as part of the train­ing received by farm­ers, and more recent­ly the financ­ing of trees for AAA farm­ers that will gen­er­ate car­bon cred­its to mit­i­gate the company’s green­house gas emis­sions, an approach called inset­ting. “With inset­ting, we are inter­nal­is­ing the envi­ron­men­tal cost of our oper­a­tional car­bon foot­print, while rein­forc­ing the resilience of our sup­ply chain,” says Mr Perez.

Equipped with the learn­ings from sus­tain­able cof­fee-sourc­ing, in 2012 Nespres­so also embarked on a sim­i­lar approach to alu­mini­um. The goal was to enable respon­si­ble and trace­able alu­mini­um-sourc­ing. Part­nered with the Inter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature, Nespres­so is proud to have facil­i­tat­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion between fel­low busi­ness­es and civic bod­ies, cre­at­ing the Alu­minum Stew­ard­ship Ini­tia­tive.

For the last decade, Mr Perez and his team have been imple­ment­ing trans­for­ma­tive sus­tain­abil­i­ty strate­gies through­out the wider com­pa­ny, har­ness­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion of employ­ees, NGOs and investors. “In this are­na, there are always new things to learn, so that we can adapt our val­ue chain,” he says.

The last two years have shown an incred­i­ble accel­er­a­tion in large cor­po­ra­tions adopt­ing respon­si­ble busi­ness prac­tices. There is a clear height­ened aware­ness with­in the pri­vate sec­tor on the chal­lenges that glob­al busi­ness faces, as well as the poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ty, esti­mat­ed by the Busi­ness and Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Com­mis­sion to be worth $12 tril­lion. There’s also an unde­ni­able shift in pur­pose-led brands to ensure that the prod­ucts we buy as indi­vid­u­als are allies for the change we want to see in the world.

As for next steps, Mr Perez notes: “The focus remains com­mu­ni­cat­ing these wider impacts to cus­tomers, so they make every pur­chase active­ly and con­scious­ly.” Nespres­so recog­nis­es it is one piece in a com­plex puz­zle, with daunt­ing chal­lenges ahead. But, with the achieve­ments so far, Nespres­so remains deter­mined and hope­ful.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.nestle-nespresso.com