Mars

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses a list of the key industry trade associations where it plays an active role.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company discloses its target to reduce its total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the full value chain by 27% by 2025 and by 67% by 2050, from 2015 levels. Also, it discloses its interim target to reduce emissions from operations by 42% by 2025 and 100% (net zero) by 2040. The company’s scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions targets are aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Ecosystem conversion
The company discloses some activities to achieve a conversion-free supply chain and the proportion of commodities that are sourced through third-party certification for palm oil, soy, and timber products.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company aimed at reducing plastic usage and transitioning towards sustainable packaging. It also provides quantitative data about its efforts to reduce plastic usage and adopt sustainable packaging solutions.

Water withdrawal
The company provides reports on the amount of water it withdraws for its own operations in water-stressed areas. Additionally, it collaborates with suppliers to minimize water withdrawal.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has announced its goal of reducing sodium by 5% by 2025 and provides updates on its progress, which currently stands at a 3.2% reduction across its portfolio. Additionally, the company has released the third edition of its Mars Food Nutrition Criteria (MFNC). It collaborated with the International Food & Beverage Alliance (IFBA) to develop and introduce the IFBA Global Sodium Reduction Commitment. The Mars Food Nutrition Criteria also include an overview of internal nutrition criteria benchmarked against the Public Health England (UK) targets for 2024 and the WHO global sodium benchmarks.

Responsible marketing
The company has a responsible marketing policy tailored to children. Furthermore, it provides evidence of compliance with its responsible marketing policy for children through third-party auditing.

Workforce nutrition
The company has implemented a nutrition education programme and workplace breastfeeding support for its employees.

Child labour
The company employs a strategic approach, known as PCAP, to safeguard children in cocoa farming communities. It outlines its methods for identifying, preventing, and addressing child labour within its cocoa supply chain. Additionally, the company highlights its related remediation systems.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company aims to close living income gaps for cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia by 2030 as part of its Cocoa for Generations strategy. It provides financial security for farmers through long-term, equitable sourcing, pays premiums and Living Income Differential, and expects its suppliers to do that too. It described how it developed its living income programmes based on assessments of current income levels and living income benchmarks, and describes its LEAP and ACTIVE programmes that facilitate access to financial tools and strengthen farmer cooperatives. In addition, it is facilitating a more diversified cocoa-farming ecosystem. Further, it discloses the impacts of its Shubh Mint project in India which has led to an increase in net mint crop income of over 250%.

Forced labour
The company discloses its approach to addressing forced labour issues within its supply chain and actively promotes the adoption of the Employer Pays Principle (EPP) among its Tier 1 fish suppliers.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company identifies vulnerable groups, such as migrant workers, women, and children, in relation to health and safety. Additionally, it has in place a four-year programme in Mexico aimed at improving the health and safety of these vulnerable groups within the sugarcane supply chain.

Act ethically
The company has a policy on prohibiting bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationships’ contracts

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available statement of policy that expects its business relationships committing to respecting the health and safety of workers and provides evidence on monitoring their compliance. Furthermore, the company publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Respect human rights
The company has a policy statement committing it to respect human rights. It also details the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts in its supply chain. It describes the saliency assessment it carried out in 2021 and discloses what it considers to be its salient human rights issues. Additionally, it provides a case study to describe its response to a salient human rights risk issue and discloses examples of its engagement with stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to strengthen its sustainability governance and accountability by assigning decision-making and oversight responsibility for its sustainability strategy to the highest governance body. While it discloses a remuneration policy related to climate, it could further link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues. Additionally, it could disclose if the highest governance body has expertise in its 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 by each stakeholder group during its stakeholder engagement activities and to describe its process, including frequencies and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups beyond its materiality assessment.

Sustainable development strategy
The company has an opportunity to disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts. It discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including those related to climate and biodiversity but can further establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Additionally, while it reports against some targets including climate, it has an opportunity to report consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has disclosed a 7.3% reduction in emissions across its full value chain compared to 2015. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the company has reported a reduction from the previous year. It is an opportunity for the company to report progress on its scope 1 and 2 targets. Additionally, the company also has the opportunity to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and report progress on its scope 3 targets.

Ecosystem conversion
The company has a target to source 100% RSPO-certified mass-balance palm oil but has the opportunity to align it with DCF.

Food loss and waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose its FLW reduction targets and report progress against them. It can also align its FLW reduction goal with SDG12.3 (50% reduction by 2030).

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence of reductions in water withdrawal across its own operations. While the company discloses relevant reduction targets, it has an opportunity to disclose a target to reduce water withdrawal across its own operations and report progress against it.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has set a goal to ensure that 95% of its products will meet its internal nutrition standards for added sugar, salt, and fat by 2025. However, it has an opportunity to establish a sales-based target to increase the proportion of more nutritious products according to government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to demonstrate that 100% of its own operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme/certification programme or other widely recognised (industry-specific) certification. Additionally, it can disclose the percentage of food suppliers who are 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
The company has an opportunity to implement a programme to offer healthy food options to its employees and expand its nutrition initiatives to its supply chain workers.

Child labour
The company works with organizations like Verité and Alliance to address the issue of child labor. However, there is still a need for the company to provide specific examples of remediation programs that it has implemented when cases of child labor are found within its operations. Furthermore, the company should translate its statements and expectations regarding the prohibition of child labor and verification of worker age into clear policy requirements for its suppliers.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
While the company discloses that it has assessed its supply chains of its 23 priority raw materials and carried out living income benchmarks, it could provide further details on the living income benchmarks it has used as its source for some commodities and/or regions.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to translate its expectations for suppliers regarding the prohibition of retaining workers’ personal documents, restricting workers’ freedom of movement and paying recruitment fees into policy requirements and extend the latter to its own operations as well. Furthermore, it could provide an analysis of trends demonstrating progress in relation to eliminating forced labour from its supply chain.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company has an opportunity to recognise the specific health and safety risks to vulnerable groups.

Act ethically
The company has an opportunity to establish a process to identify risks and impacts related to bribery and corruption. While it has a mechanism for stakeholders to raise bribery and corruption concerns, it could further clarify if this mechanism is accessible to all stakeholders and if complainants can file concerns and complaints without fear of reprisals.

Furthermore, the company could demonstrate ethical conduct by publishing a policy statement that outlines its approach to lobbying and political engagement, emphasises its non-participation in political contributions, or alternatively, states the criteria of exceptions. It discloses some information regarding its lobbying expenditures. However, it has an opportunity to disclose the expenditures in all locations where it carries out lobbying activities or specify it only does so in specific countries or regions.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose a public policy document committing it to respect their health and safety. Additionally, it could set a time-bound target for ensuring all workers receive a living wage and describes the living wage determination methodology in regions where it operates. While it has set expectations on the wage paid by its suppliers, it has an opportunity to add a requirement for them to pay a living wage, and disclose how it supports the payment.

Furthermore, the company could make its gender equality and women’s empowerment target time-bound and disclose that it has at least 30% women on the highest governing body. While it reports the mean and median gender pay gap for different entities within its UK operations, it could further discloses 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 discloses statements committing it to respect the ILO’s fundamental rights at work. However, it has an opportunity to use stronger language and place them in a policy document. It could also extend this commitment to its business relationships and ensure its applicability across all contexts and locations. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to describe the process for identifying its human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities within its own operations.