ALDI Nord

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company is reducing its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and has set a specific target to achieve this. Regular progress reports are provided to track the company’s advancement towards these targets. The company’s GHG emissions reduction goals are aligned with a trajectory that aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Animal welfare
The company discloses evidence of processes of animal welfare third-party certifications or third-party audits. It also discloses a target that addresses animal welfare issues in its supply chain and reports progress against it.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates commitment, has policies or partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging. This includes activities to improve its own-brand packaging as well as activities with suppliers to reduce the use of plastics, leading to savings across geographies.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company shares data about reducing sugar and salt levels across multiple product categories.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company discloses it has adopted the Nutri-Score label as well as The Keyhole label in Denmark.

Responsible marketing
The company has a responsible marketing policy tailored to children.

Workforce nutrition
The company discloses that it provides fruit baskets as a healthy alternative to sugary snacks, which is one of its efforts to accelerate the company’s preventive health measure in 2021.

Child labour
If child labour occurs at a production site, the company undertakes remediation measures such as enrolling children in an educational programme and providing a living allowance. Furthermore, it requires suppliers to prohibit child labour and to verify the age of recruited workers.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has identified living income benchmarks that are based on the Anker methodology, and discloses that it is committed to assessing the impact of its purchasing practices on wages and incomes. Also, it discloses that it will pursue long-term contracts and risk sharing through insurances to increase the resilience of smallholders. It also pays premiums to smallholders and sources cocoa beans for some of its brands through Tony’s Open Chain. In addition, it promotes alternative income sources for smallholders and works with partners to provide them access to credits, loans, inputs, and training.

Forced labour
The company has a policy against using recruitment fees or related costs to obtain a job, and also against keeping workers’ personal documents or limiting their freedom of movement within its operations and supply chain.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company utilizes a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) to identify and evaluate the health and safety risks faced by vulnerable groups within the tea supply chain in India. Through this assessment, the company acknowledges and assesses the specific risks associated with the health and safety of these vulnerable groups.

Living wage
The company discloses that it collaborates with international organisations such as the GIZ, IDH and the World Banana Forum of the FAO, in order to support the publication of reliable living wage and living income benchmarks and develop strategies for driving change throughout its supply chains.

Provide and promote decent work
The company demonstrates its commitment to supporting the payment of a living wage by its suppliers. It discloses that 99.03% of its total employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements, excluding Poland where there are no such agreements. Additionally, the company reveals the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category. Moreover, the company publicly commits to the principles of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Respect human rights
The company publicly commits to respecting human rights through a readily available policy statement as well as describes how it identifies and assesses human rights risks and impacts in its supply chain. The results of these assessments are disclosed to the public. Furthermore, the company provides an example of the actions it has taken in response to human rights issues identified through assessments. Additionally, the company discloses the categories of stakeholders, such as suppliers, service providers, and workers, whose human rights may be affected by its activities.

The company engages with stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities. Moreover, it ensures that it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers. In addition, the company demonstrates its commitment to external stakeholders by having a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to those who may be adversely affected by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover environmental and social issues. Furthermore, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member. Furthermore, it could provide a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of these trade associations with its sustainability targets and report any (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised by each stakeholder group during its stakeholder engagement activities.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate, ecosystem and nutrition, social inclusion. However, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Furthermore, while it reports qualitative progress against all its targets, it could disclose quantitative information regarding its current achievement.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and disclose a time-bound target in alignment with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Animal welfare
While the company has a target that addresses animal welfare issues in its supply chain, but has an opportunity to make it applicable to all species, geographies and products.

Ecosystem conversion
The company discloses some evidence of addressing conversion. However, this does not guarantee DCF-aligned practices. While the company has a target to achieve conversion-free supply chains, some of the certification models implemented by the company (e.g. RSPO Book and Claim) are not aligned with DCF targets. It therefore has an opportunity to make its target time-bound and aligned with DCF targets

Food loss and waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose its food loss and waste (FLW) reduction targets and report progress against these targets. Additionally, the company can consider aligning its FLW reduction goal with SDG12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction by 2030.

Plastic use and packaging waste
While the company describes its activities to reduce plastic use and transition towards sustainable packaging, it has an opportunity to disclose the associated quantitative data.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence of reductions in water withdrawal across its own operations. Additionally, they can disclose a time-bound target to reduce water withdrawal across their operations and provide progress reports on the target. Furthermore, they can report the amount of water withdrawn for their operations in water-stressed areas.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has the opportunity to implement commercial activities that increase the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods. Furthermore, setting specific targets to improve both accessibility and affordability through these commercial activities represents an additional opportunity.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company discloses that its product optimization is carried out according to internal ALDI criteria, which incorporate the WHO nutrient profile model. However, there is an opportunity for the company to provide additional information about its nutrition criteria and how they align with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines. Furthermore, the company has the opportunity to establish a sales-based target aimed at increasing the percentage of more nutritious products.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to disclose the percentage of products for which its front-of-pack labelling schemes have been rolled out.

Food safety
The company has a chance to showcase that all of its operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme or other widely recognized (industry-specific) certification. Additionally, the company can also disclose the percentage of food suppliers certified to a GFSI-recognized food safety scheme.

Responsible marketing
The company has an opportunity to provide evidence of marketing activities to promote heathier and more nutritious food options (in accordance with a government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines).

Workforce nutrition
While the company has health and wellbeing promotion programs for its employees it has an opportunity to enhance the program by incorporating nutrition-focused health checks or nutrition education. It could also disclose the implementation of breastfeeding supports program such as parental leave of at least 6 months, dedicated breastfeeding rooms or flexible working hours for breastfeeding mothers. Furthermore, it has an opportunity to implement a programme to offer healthy food options to its employees.

Child labour
The company discloses that it supports its business partners through training on aspects such as prevention, identification and remediation of child labour. However, it has an opportunity to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it assesses living income gaps.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company has an opportunity to identify vulnerable groups in relation to health and safety.

Land rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. Furthermore, it could describe a process at its operations and supply chain level to identify legitimate tenure rightsholders when acquiring, leasing or making other arrangements to use land and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company discloses a target that by 2025, at least 90 per cent of volumes sourced from Ecuador must be sourced as Living Wage Bananas. However, it has an opportunity to disclose a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers. Also, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or direct suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company has an opportunity to disclose a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in contracts with business relationships. It could also describe its process for identifying bribery and corruption, and indicate the existence of a grievance mechanism through which stakeholders can file related complaints. Further, the company could disclose how it approaches lobbying and political engagement in a public policy document, specify that it does not make any political contributions, and divulge how much it spends on lobbying activities.

Provide and promote decent work
While the company states that it respects the health and safety of workers for its operations and supply chain, it could formalise this commitment in a public policy document. Additionally, it could provide evidence of how it monitors its suppliers’ performance on health and safety standards. Further, while the company states that it pays fair remuneration to its employees in accordance with their performance, it could commit to paying a living wage by setting a time-bound target and also describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates.
Moreover, the company has an opportunity to disclose that it has at least 30% women on the highest governing body and the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
While company discloses statements committing it to respect the ILO’s fundamental rights at work in its operations and supply chain, it has an opportunity to use stronger language to turn the statement into a formal commitment. Additionally, it could describe the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities, covering its own operations. Furthermore, the company could also describe its process for assessing and identifying what it considers to be its salient human rights issues.