Constellation Brands

Sustainable development strategy
The company reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company aims to decrease both scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions. It has set a specific target with a timeline for reducing these emissions. Additionally, the company regularly monitors and reports its progress towards achieving these targets.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates commitment and partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging.

Responsible marketing
The company has a responsible marketing policy that covers all media channels, aimed at reducing children exposure to alcohol marketing and limiting the appeal of alcohol marketing.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion area.

Act ethically
The company discloses a public commitment to protect personal data and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. Additionally, the company has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing to respecting the health and safety of workers and expects its business relationships to do the same. The company discloses both the proportion of its total direct operations workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements and the proportion for each employee category by race or ethnicity. Additionally, the company has set a target to increase the female representation in its U.S. workforce to 50% by 2026 and discloses that the current percentage of women on the board is 30.76%.

Respect human rights
The company indicates that it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible not only to all its workers but also to all external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to report on sustainability accountability within its governance structure.

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 and to describe its process, including frequencies and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups beyond materiality assessment.

Sustainable development strategy
The company states that it has a materiality assessment but could further disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts, including how the outcome of the process. While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has the opportunity to align its scope 1 and 2 emissions targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Additionally, it can reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and disclose a time-bound target for this reduction. The company should also report progress against these scope 3 targets and align them with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Ecosystem conversion
The company has an opportunity to disclose its efforts to avoid ecosystem conversion, including deforestation or restoration. The company could develop a strategy and publicly report on specific, time-bound targets.

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 enhance its disclosures relating to water use and withdrawal.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company currently shares examples of products that have lower calories or zero sugar. However, there is an opportunity for the company to also share data on its ongoing efforts to reduce sugar content across its entire product portfolio.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to make nutritional information more visible to consumers through the adoption of front-of-pack labels and/or any other consumer-facing nutrition label.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment to food safety and demonstrate that its operations and supply chain adhere to food safety standards.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations and to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts. While the company prohibits its suppliers from using child labour, it could require them to have an age-verification system in place.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some commodities and regions. Also, it could adopt procurement practices and develop supply chain relationships that improve farmers’ income resilience.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain such as a prohibition to pay recruitment fees, to retain workers’ personal documents or to restrict workers’ freedom of movement. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Living wage
The company has an opportunity to set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources. Also, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company prohibits bribery and corruption but has not formalized this commitment in a public policy document. It could describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations. Although the company states that it does not make political contributions in its Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, this commitment is not formalized in a public policy document. The company has the opportunity to set out a policy on its lobbying and political engagement approach, disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities, and specify that it requires third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it monitors the health and safety performance of its suppliers. While the company states that it pays minimum wage to its employees, it has an opportunity to commit to paying a living wage by setting a time-bound target and to disclose how it determines this wage for different regions. The company has set expectations on the wage paid by its suppliers but has an opportunity to add a requirement for them to also pay a living wage and to disclose how it supports this payment. While committed to diversity, the company has an opportunity to explicitly commit to gender equality and women’s empowerment and to disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category, by significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
The company has a public policy on human rights and specific workers’ rights, but could strengthen its language for a more formal commitment and expand its scope to cover all ILO fundamental rights. It expects the same of its suppliers, yet also stops short of referencing all ILO rights. Opportunities exist for the company to outline how it identifies and addresses human rights risks in its own operations and its supply chain. Furthermore, the company could benefit from disclosing its methodology for assessing salient human rights issues, the results of its risk assessments, and any global systems in place to act on, prevent, or mitigate these issues.