Mitsubishi Corporation

Stakeholder engagement
Mitsubishi Corporation discloses the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups, underscoring its commitment to fostering effective and diverse stakeholder relationships.

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 actively works towards reducing its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions. It has set a time-bound target to effectively decrease both scope 1 and 2 emissions. Additionally, the company regularly reports its progress in meeting these targets for scope 1 and 2 emissions.

Ecosystem conversion
The company discloses some activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains. It also discloses the proportion of high-risk commodities which are conversion-free.

Food loss and waste
The company collaborates with value chain partners to prevent FLW from being generated.

Sustainable fishing and aquaculture
The company demonstrates its dedication to sustainable fishing and aquaculture by providing qualitative evidence, which is based on specific environmental sourcing criteria.

Water withdrawal
Mitsubishi Corporation has implemented measures to reduce water withdrawal within its own operational activities. These efforts reflect its commitment to responsible water management.

Workforce nutrition
The company has implemented nutrition-focused health check and nutrition education program through online seminars and health screening events for its employees. Furthermore, it provides its employees with health-conscious meals with information about nutritional value, such as the amount of salt the meals contain.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion area.

Act ethically
The company discloses a policy on bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contractual agreements with business relationships.

Provide and promote decent work
The company discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships. It also discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. Additionally, it reports the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category and a target to increase the percentage of women in management-level positions above 15% by FY 2025.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights and describes the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts in its supply chain. It further indicates that it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company discloses a remuneration policy related to climate but can further link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues. While stating that the board of directors has the expertise in climate and social inclusion, there is an opportunity for the company to disclose whether its highest governance body has specific expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics including nutrition, water, soil health, ecosystem conversion and biodiversity.

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 engagement activities.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate and social inclusion but could further establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. While the company reports against some targets including climate and social inclusion, it has an opportunity to report consistently against all its targets.

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, the company has the chance to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and disclose a time-bound target for this reduction. Moreover, the company can report its progress against these scope 3 targets. Lastly, the company’s scope 3 emissions targets have the potential to align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Ecosystem conversion
While the company has a target to achieve conversion-free supply chains, it could cover all high-risk commodities.

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
The company has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence regarding plastic use reduction and use of sustainable packaging.

Protein diversification
The company has an opportunity to set a sales-based target to increase alternative proteins across its portfolio, as well as report progress against this target.

Sustainable fishing and aquaculture
Although the company demonstrates a commitment to sustainable fishing and aquaculture, there is an opportunity for improvement in providing quantitative evidence of its progress in this area. While the company discloses its goal of procuring 30% of tuna with GSSI-recognized certification by 2030, no evidence was found regarding the company’s reporting of progress towards achieving this target.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to set a time-bound target for reducing water withdrawal in its own operations and subsequently report progress on achieving this target. Additionally, the company has a chance to disclose the amount of water it withdraws in water-stressed areas for its own operations. While the company already establishes expectations for its suppliers to reduce water withdrawal, there is an opportunity for further engagement with them in this regard.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment and commercial activities to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company provides examples of reformulated products. However, there is potential for improvement in reporting its overall efforts to reduce sugar, salt, and fat, and/or increase the presence of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains in its entire portfolio. Additionally, there is an opportunity for the company to adopt a nutrient profiling system and set a sales-based target to increase the proportion of more nutritious products, aligning with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to adopt front-of-pack labels or any other consumer- facing nutrition labels that support consumers with making healthier food choices. In addition, it can disclose the percentage of products/menus for which its front-of-pack labelling schemes have been rolled out.

Workforce nutrition
The company has the opportunity to provide quantitative evidence on its healthy food offering program. It could also disclose the length covered by its parental leave policy as well as any other breastfeeding supports such as dedicated breastfeeding rooms or flexible working hours for breastfeeding mothers. Furthermore, the company has an opportunity to expand its nutrition initiatives to its supply chain workers.

Child labour
The company has the chance to provide examples of remediation programs when a case of child labor is discovered in its operations. Additionally, it can demonstrate how it is enhancing the capabilities of its suppliers to prevent child labor impacts, which surpasses its Sustainable Supply Chain Survey. Although the company already forbids its suppliers from employing child labor, it could also mandate the implementation of an age-verification system.

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.

Health and safety of vulnerable groups
The company has an opportunity to recognise and assess the health and safety risks to vulnerable groups, such as migrant and temporary labourers, women and young farmers. Furthermore, it could provide evidence of support activities that improve the health and safety of vulnerable groups.

Living wage
The company states that its suppliers shall pay employees at least the statutory minimum wage and endeavor to pay at least the living wage. However, it has an opportunity to make paying living wages a requirement or set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers. Also, it could describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources and disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or direct suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
While the company states that it has an anti-corruption system and procedures in place along with a mechanism to raise related concerns, it has an opportunity to disclose its processes for identifying and addressing bribery and corruption and clearly state that a grievance mechanism is accessible to all stakeholders. It could also disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement beyond a personal level in a public policy document and state that it does not make political contributions and divulge its lobbying expenditures.

Provide and promote decent work
While the company states that it respects the health and safety of workers in its operations and supply chain, it has an opportunity to formalise this commitment in a public policy document.

Additionally, the company states that it pays a legal wage and expects the same in its supply chain. However, it could disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or state that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage. It could also describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates and how it works to support its suppliers in paying a living wage.

Furthermore, the company could commit to gender equality and women’s empowerment and disclose the representation of women on the highest governance body along with the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available statement committing it to respect specific workers’ rights in its operations and supply chain but has an opportunity to reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work and place them in a formal policy document.

Additionally, although the company conducts human rights due diligence, it could describe a comprehensive process for assessing and identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities, and its salient human rights issues. It could further specify what it considers to be salient human rights issues, how relevant factors are considered and how it acts to prevent, mitigate or remediate its salient human rights issues through a global system.