Kellogg’s

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses some membership associations; however, it could disclose a full list of trade associations of which it is a member for all jurisdictions where it operates.

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. Furthermore, it has group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has set targets to reduce its scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions respectively by 45% by the end of 2030, 66% by 2050 and 50% by 2050.

Food loss and waste
Between 2021 and 2022, the company discloses a quantitative decrease in the amount of FLW generated. Furthermore, it reports progress towards its FLW reduction targets which also align with the SDG 12.3 goal of reducing FLW by 50 percent by 2030. To actively combat FLW, the company collaborates with its value chain partners to minimize both pre and postharvest losses on farms. A noteworthy example of this is Kellogg’s partnership with the Mexico Food Bank Network, due to which the surplus fruits and vegetables are redirected to communities in need.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company is committed to reducing plastic use and transitioning to sustainable packaging. It demonstrates this commitment through its policies and activities. The company has set specific targets to reduce virgin polymer production, overall plastic use, and waste. Additionally, it aims to increase the amount of reusable or refillable packaging. The company also provides regular reports on their progress towards these targets.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity such as partnerships with farmers in multiple countries to encourage crop diversification.

Water withdrawal
The company reports how much water is withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company demonstrates that it is enhancing the nutritional value of its products, and it shares data on its efforts to reduce the level of sugar and salt across its portfolio. For example, the company discloses that 80% of its U.S. portfolio currently falls below upper bound levels of the FDA’s sodium targets.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company discloses the percentage of products for which its front-of-pack labelling schemes have been rolled out.

Responsible marketing
The company provides evidence of compliance with its responsible marketing policy for children through third-party auditing.

Child labour
The company requires suppliers to prohibit child labour and verify the age of recruited workers. Furthermore, it works with its sultana suppliers in Turkey to eliminate child labour and improve working conditions for young workers.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
As part of the company’s Better Days Promise, its is dedicated to supporting 1 million farmers and agronomists and establishing resilient and responsible supply chains for their priority ingredients by 2030. It has implemented on-the-ground interventions to support farmers, particularly smallholder producers in regions facing systemic challenges. For example, it partnered with TechnoServe in India to promote collective marketing through Farmer Producer Companies formed by the farmers which ultimately resulted in the establishment of value-added supply chains. Further, it reports on the impacts of this program for farm revenues.

Forced labour
The company discloses a prohibition to use any recruitment fees or related costs to secure a job and to retain workers’ personal documents or restrict workers’ freedom of movement for its operations and supply chain. Furthermore, it discloses how it works with its supply chain on responsible recruitment practices to combat forced labour.

Land rights
The company requires its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Act ethically
The company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. Moreover, it has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption. Additionally, it also discloses its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a policy statement. The company also discloses a global tax strategy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements and the proportion of each employee category by race or ethnicity. Moreover, the company publicly commits to respecting the health and safety of workers and expects its business relationships to do so. Additionally, the company publicly states that all overtime work must be consensual and be paid at a premium rate.

Further, the company publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment and discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category. It has 41.67% women on the board and has an aspirational goal of 50/50 gender parity by the end of 2025.

Respect human rights
The company commits to respect human rights and has a publicly available policy statement expecting suppliers to respect the ILO core labour rights. Moreover, the company carries out human rights due diligence which includes processes for identifying risks and impacts across its value chain, for assessing its salient human rights and discloses what are the latter. It also outlines its global system to prevent, mitigate, or address these issues.

In addition, the company engages with stakeholders who may be affected by its activities and has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and external stakeholders impacted negatively by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company discloses a remuneration policy related to sustainability; however, it has an opportunity to link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues. Furthermore, while it states that the board of directors has expertise in nutrition, 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 clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, it can 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 during its stakeholder engagement activities and the outcomes of its stakeholder engagement, beyond materiality assessment.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to align its GHG emissions reduction targets with a 1.5-degree trajectory and report reduction progress against these across its scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions.

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 commitments to reduce plastic use and transition towards sustainable packaging, it has an opportunity to disclose the associated quantitative data.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and report progress against it.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence of reductions in water withdrawal across its own operations. In addition, it can also disclose a time-bound target to reduce water withdrawal across all its operations and report its progress against the target. Although the company mentions plans to collaborate with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal, it also has the chance to report and provide evidence of its engagement processes.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to shift its focus from philanthropic to commercial activities to improve the accessibility of nutritious foods, especially for vulnerable groups. It can also implement commercial activities to improve the affordability of nutritious foods, especially for vulnerable groups. Additionally, the company could set specific targets to achieve these objectives through its commercial activities.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has recently reviewed its nutrition criteria based on nutrition science and public health dietary recommendations, including FDA sodium targets, CFBAI, and IFBA. However, there is an opportunity to disclose how its nutritional guidelines and portfolio are benchmarked against external, (government-endorsed) nutrient profiling systems and set a sales-based target to increase the percentage of nutritious products.

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.

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).

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 show a progressive trend in eliminating child labour from its supply chain.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to provide an analysis of trends demonstrating progress in relation to eliminating forced labour from its supply chain.

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 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 claims that its leaders and managers participate in annual enterprise risk assessments, which cover fraud, anticorruption compliance, and the management of third-party intermediaries. However, the company could describe how it identifies bribery and corruption risks in specific locations or activities within its own operations.

Although the company has a policy statement that allows political contributions, it is unclear if the company strictly permits political contributions by exception and clearly defines the criteria for making them. Additionally, the company could consider disclosing its lobbying activity expenditures. Moreover, it could specify that it mandates third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company could disclose not only that it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships but also the ways to do so. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to disclose either a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or if it has successfully achieved this goal. Furthermore, the company could disclose its process for determining a living wage in the regions where it operates. It could also disclose the ways in which it actively supports its suppliers in paying a living wage. Lastly, the company could disclose the ratio of women’s basic salary and remuneration to that of men in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category, specifying the significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
The company currently discloses statements that commit it to respecting the fundamental rights at work as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO). However, there is room for improvement in the language used to transform the statement into a more formal and binding commitment. This could be accomplished by incorporating the statements into a formal policy document.