Lindt & Sprüngli

Sustainability strategy and accountability
Lindt & Sprüngli 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.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
Lindt & Sprüngli discloses some activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains and the proportion of high-risk commodities which are conversion-free.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
Lindt & Sprüngli discloses its inputs according to an international standard.

Solid and air pollution
Lindt & Sprüngli demonstrates commitment, partakes in activities and discloses quantitative data related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging, including the proportion of virgin plastic used in packaging. It has also set a target regarding the reduction of virgin plastic use and reports progress against it.

Water
Lindt & Sprüngli engages with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal and demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its own operations.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion and community impact area.

Act ethically
Lindt & Sprüngli maintains a strict policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, which is incorporated into its contracts with direct business relationships through anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses. It provides a transparent channel for raising concerns and complaints related to bribery and corruption via an email address and a dedicated website. Importantly, this channel is open to all, with options for anonymity or self-identification.

Additionally, the company actively discloses its lobbying expenditures, demonstrating transparency in its political engagement activities. Furthermore, it ensures that third-party lobbyists adhere to its lobbying and political engagement policy, reinforcing its commitment to ethical practices.

Provide and promote decent work
Lindt & Sprüngli demonstrates a strong commitment to worker health and safety through publicly available policy statements for both its own operations and business relationships. Furthermore, it upholds fair labour practices by publicly expecting that its business relationships shall not require workers to work more than 48 hours in a regular work week or 60 hours including overtime.

Moreover, the company promotes labour rights by disclosing that 48% of its workforce benefits from collective bargaining agreements. It emphasises gender equality and transparency by disclosing the proportion of women in various employee categories and setting a clear time-bound target of achieving 40% women in senior leadership positions by 2025.

Respect human rights
Lindt & Sprüngli publicly commits to respecting human rights and expects its suppliers to adhere to the International Labour Organization (ILO) core labour rights. It openly shares the results of its human rights risk assessments. In addressing child labour in its cocoa supply chain, it focuses on high-risk countries, aiming to cover all cocoa from these regions with a child labour monitoring and remediation system (CLMRS) by 2025. It has developed the community child protection system (CCPS) and engaged stakeholders in reviews, monitoring, and staff training.

Moreover, the company actively involves a wide range of stakeholders whose human rights may be affected by its activities. It maintains accessible human rights grievance mechanisms for both its workers and external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company’s operations.

Lobbying
The company does not report on its lobbying and advocacy practices on nature-related issues, nor whether these activities align with its sustainability strategy.

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 human rights due diligence process.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including ecosystem conversion and social inclusion. However, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Also, while the company reports qualitative progress against all its targets, it could disclose quantitative information regarding its current status. Furthermore, although the company discloses a remuneration policy related to non-financial targets, it could link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues. Lastly, the company could improve its transparency by disclosing whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company does not have time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains, nor a commitment to ensure zero conversion. Furthermore, it is not committed to restoring ecosystems and does not disclose details and outcomes of ecosystem restoration projects in areas affected by its own operations or by its suppliers.

GHG emissions
The company should set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and report progress against them. Crucially, it needs to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and its targets should align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Impact and dependencies assessment
While the company focuses on stopping deforestation in cocoa growing areas and has a responsible sourcing roadmap 2025, it has an opportunity to assess and disclose its impacts on nature, including biodiversity, within its own operations and upstream business relationships. Despite conducting a raw material risk assessment and a satellite imagery-based analysis of tree cover loss, the company could further assess and disclose its impacts in its upstream business relationships, along with the methodology and results. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to assess and disclose its dependencies on nature within its operations and 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 showcases initiatives like farmer support for shade tree planting and reviews to ensure cocoa isn’t sourced from protected regions, further transparency is needed in disclosing species adjacent to its sites. Its commendable efforts in mapping cocoa farms using GPS and polygon systems could be augmented by disclosing its own operations and suppliers’ locations relative to biodiversity-rich zones. Moreover, the company could bolster its commitment by presenting the conservation status of species around its premises based on national and international conservation criteria.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company has an opportunity to disclose its inputs according to an international standard, and to report quantitatively on its group-wide circularity performance. It could also disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and report progress against it.

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. The company could also report on the amount of plastic waste generated and proportions directed from or to disposal.

Water
The company has an opportunity to further improve water withdrawal by setting a time-bound target and disclosing water withdrawals in water-stressed areas. Furthermore, it does not disclose relevant information on water pollution or rights to water in its operations or supply chains.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not show if it is committed to respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights or land rights of local communities.

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 could outline its process for identifying bribery and corruption risks and its impacts in specific locations or activities, focusing on its own operations. Furthermore, the company can develop a policy that clearly describes its approach to lobbying and political engagement. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to make a public declaration stating that it does not make any political contributions.

Provide and promote decent work
The company can enhance its reporting by detailing its health and safety monitoring process for suppliers and setting clear targets for achieving a living wage. Additionally, it could provide insights into how it determines living wage rates in various regions and consider introducing mandatory living wage requirements for suppliers while disclosing support mechanisms. Moreover, there is an opportunity to publicly commit to gender equality, work towards achieving a minimum of 30% women on the board, and disclose gender-based salary ratios across different job categories and significant locations.

Respect human rights
The company could consider using stronger language to turn its statement into a formal commitment in which it commits to respect the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) fundamental rights at work. Additionally, the company can take the opportunity to outline a clear process for identifying human rights risks and impacts in specific locations or activities, both within its own operations and throughout its supply chain. While the company currently discloses its salient human rights issues, there is room for improvement in terms of clearly disclosing the process for assessing the significance of these risks.