Ingredion

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company provides evidence of linking performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues.

GHG emissions
Ingredion has set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions as well as report progress against them. Additionally, the company reduces its scope 1 and 2 emissions, and it also has a target to reduce its scope 3 emissions.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company discloses which organisms it directly exploits for commercial uses, including wild animal and plant species. The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices.

Solid and air pollution
The company partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging.

Water
Ingredion reports how much water is withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas. The company regularly reports on water pollution. Additionally, the company has a commitment to respect the right to water, and requires access to water and sanitation, including refraining from negatively affecting access to safe water, to be included in contractual arrangements with its business relationships.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company is committed to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

Act ethically
The company demonstrates a commitment to data protection with a public statement and a privacy policy. It also upholds its commitment to ethical conduct with a clear anti-bribery and corruption policy. Additionally, the company provides stakeholders with a grievance mechanism for addressing concerns related to bribery and corruption. Furthermore, it outlines its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a dedicated policy statement, ensuring transparency in this area.

Provide and promote decent work
The company demonstrates its commitment to worker health and safety through public policy statements, including an expectation for business relationships to do the same. It also shares information about collective bargaining agreements at 45% of its manufacturing plants. Furthermore, the company provides insights into its workforce demographics, including age, gender, and race or ethnicity, fostering transparency and inclusivity. Lastly, it discloses the composition of its board, with 4 out of 12 members being female, accounting for a 33% representation of women on the board.

Respect human rights
The company strongly upholds human rights and labor rights, with publicly available policy statements that affirm its commitment. It further enhances transparency by providing accessible reporting channels, including a website and toll-free numbers by country, where individuals can raise grievances. The company’s commitment to confidentiality is evident, offering complainants the option to remain anonymous or identify themselves when making reports.

Lobbying
The company has an opportunity disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member. Additionally, while the company states that it assesses its trade associations on climate change, it has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets and to report (potential) misalignments.

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 frequency and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups beyond its materiality assessment.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
While the company states that it has a materiality assessment, it has an opportunity to disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts. This should include how external stakeholders are involved in the process and how regularly the assessment is undertaken. Also, the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate, biodiversity and soil health. However, there is an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Additionally, while the company reports qualitative progress against all its targets, it could disclose quantitative information regarding its current status. Lastly, the company could improve its performance by disclosing whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
No evidence was found regarding the company’s efforts to avoid ecosystem conversion, including deforestation, or promote restoration. The company has an opportunity to develop a strategy and publicly report on specific, time-bound targets.

GHG emissions
The company discloses that its science-based target aligns with a 2°C scenario, which is validated by the SBTi. Crucially, the company’s targets need to align with a 1.5-degree trajectory. Additionally, the company should report progress against its scope 3 targets and reduce its scope 3 emissions.

Impact and dependencies assessment
While Ingredion is committed to having a net positive impact on sustainability and has mapped its operations against global biodiversity hotspots, it has an opportunity to assess and disclose its impacts on nature, including biodiversity, within its own operations. Despite employing tools like the SAI Platform’s Farm Sustainability Assessment and the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool in pilot areas, the company could expand these assessments to cover all its upstream business relationships, as well as disclose the methodology and full results. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to assess and disclose its dependencies on nature both within its own operations and its upstream business relationships.

Invasive species
The company has not identified any activities that could lead to the introduction of invasive alien species in its own operations.

Key areas and species
While the company has made strides in assessing its operations against biodiversity hotspots, identifying areas at risk for biodiversity loss, and mapping its sourcing against the CEPF’s biodiversity hotspots, there are areas where further disclosure would enhance transparency. Namely, the company has opportunities to specify names and locations of its operations and crop sourcing adjacent to biodiversity-risk zones, reveal locations of its upstream business relationships, particularly suppliers, that are near critical biodiversity areas, detail species in proximity to its suppliers, and provide conservation status for species within its operations based on national and international lists.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
No evidence was found regarding the company’s efforts to work towards a circular economy or which organisms it exploits. The company has an opportunity to develop a strategy and publicly report on specific, time-bound targets.

Solid and air pollution
The company should commit to avoid developing or marketing new chemicals or products with SVHC (substance of very high concern) properties, as well as work on reducing the production of hazardous substances and waste. It has an opportunity to report on air quality parameters of emissions of harmful air pollutants and disclose time-bound targets to reduce air pollutants across the most material parts of its value chain. 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, including the amount of plastic waste generated and proportions directed from or to disposal.

Water
Ingredion has an opportunity to disclose reductions in its water withdrawal, as well as set targets and engage with suppliers. The company has an opportunity to disclose relevant information on water pollution, such as water pollution metrics.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not disclose its processes to identify and recognise the rights of indigenous peoples when activities in its own operations or its supply chain may impact their rights and describes how it obtains indigenous peoples’ free, prior, and informed consent regarding whether and how to carry out projects.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company has an opportunity to commit to respecting local communities’ right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and to zero tolerance for acts of violence, threats, intimidation or judicial harassment committed against land and environmental rights defenders. Moreover, it should track its actual or potential negative impacts on the health of local communities.

Act ethically
The company has the option to outline its procedures for identifying bribery and corruption risks and their impacts in specific locations or activities involving its own operations. Furthermore, the company can choose to incorporate anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses into its contracts with business relationships.

In addition, the company has the opportunity to publicly disclose a policy statement stating that it does not make political contributions. It could also reveal its spending on lobbying activities and demonstrate its requirement for third-party lobbyists to adhere to its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company can enhance its transparency by providing details on how it monitors the health and safety performance of its suppliers. Additionally, it has an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to fair wages by setting a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage and explaining the methodology used to determine living wages in the regions of its operation. Furthermore, the company could strengthen its stance on gender equality and women’s empowerment by publicly committing to these principles and revealing the gender-based salary ratios within its workforce across significant locations.

Respect human rights
The company could strengthen its commitment by referencing all the ILO fundamental rights at work in addition to specific workers’ rights for its suppliers. Furthermore, the company has an opportunity to provide comprehensive insights into its approach to identifying human rights risks and impacts, both within its own operations and across its supply chain. This could involve detailing its process for conducting human rights risk assessments, identifying salient issues, and openly disclosing the results. Additionally, the company could further enhance its transparency by revealing its global system for addressing and preventing salient human rights issues.