Mercadona

Sustainability strategy and accountability
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.

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

Water
The company reports a decrease in water pollution, and demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its own operations.

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

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. Furthermore, it discloses income tax payments for all its tax jurisdictions.

Provide and promote decent work
The company discloses a policy statement committing it to respect its workers’ health and safety and extending this expectation to its business relationships. The company publicly states that it ensures its workdays to not exceed the maximum number of hours allowed by law, which is 40 hours in the countries it operates. Moreover, it reports that 100% of its employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements.

Respect human rights
The company has a policy statement committing it to respect the International Labour Organization (ILO) fundamental rights at work and expecting its business relationships to do the same.

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 materiality assessment.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company has an opportunity to disclose group wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain and report consistently against all its targets. Additionally, it could link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues. Furthermore, 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
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 should set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions as well as report progress against them. Crucially, the company needs to reduce its scope 1,2 and 3 emissions and its targets need to align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Impact and dependencies assessment
While the company carries out various initiatives aimed at mitigating its impact on biodiversity, it still has the opportunity to assess and disclose its impacts on nature, including biodiversity, within its own operations and in its upstream business relationships. Furthermore, the company could benefit from evaluating and disclosing its dependencies on nature across these sectors.

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
The company has an opportunity to disclose locations within or adjacent to areas important for biodiversity, both in its own operations and its supplier locations. It could also disclose existing species populations existing in or adjacent to both its own and its suppliers’ locations, as well as the conservation status of species identified at its own sites according to 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. 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 set time-bound targets and engage with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal. The company could disclose how it manages water quality, as well as water pollution metrics and targets to reduce the same. The company does not disclose a commitment to respect the right to water. The company does not disclose its processes for implementing preventive and corrective action plans for identified specific risks to the right to water and sanitation in its own operations.

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 has an opportunity to establish a process to identify risks and impacts related to bribery and corruption. While the company has a mechanism for stakeholders to raise bribery and corruption concerns, it has an opportunity to ensure that complainants have the option to identify themselves or remain anonymous.

Furthermore, the company can demonstrate ethical conduct by publishing a policy statement that outlines its approach to lobbying and political engagement, emphasizes its non-participation in political contributions, or alternatively, states the criteria of exceptions. It could also transparently disclose all lobbying expenditures.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to strengthen its commitment to workers’ health and safety by providing evidence of monitoring suppliers’ compliance.
Furthermore, it states that it pays wage according to applicable laws to its employees. However, it has an opportunity to commit to paying a living wage and to set a time-bound target and to disclose how it determines a living wage for the 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.

Additionally, the company could translate its commitment statements on gender equality and women’s empowerment into a public policy document and disclose a related time-bound target. It could also disclose the representation of women on the highest governance body and 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 human rights but has an opportunity to place it in a formal policy document. Additionally, the company could describe the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities, including its suppliers, as well as the process for assessing and identifying its salient human right issues. Moreover, the company could establish a global system to address these salient human rights issues by implementing preventive, mitigative, or remedial measures.