The Hershey Company

Stakeholder engagement
The company’s stakeholder engagement covers nutrition, biodiversity and social inclusion.

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. Also, it reports consistently against all its targets. Furthermore, 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.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company has a commitment to ensure zero conversion and discloses some activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains. Furthermore, the company is committed to restoring ecosystems.

GHG emissions
The company has set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, which are aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices. Furthermore, the company discloses quantifiable data on its impact on soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices.

Solid and air pollution
The company reports regularly on air quality parameters of emissions of harmful air pollutants. It also partakes in activities and discloses quantitative data on plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging.

Water
The company reports how much water is withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas. The company demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its operations. The company discloses its processes for implementing preventive and corrective action plans for identified specific risks to the right to water and sanitation in its operations.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company requires its business relationships to identify and recognise affected Indigenous Peoples and to obtain their free, prior and informed consent regarding whether and how to carry out projects.

Act ethically
The company discloses its global tax strategy and indicates that an executive-level individual is responsible for its execution. It also has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and includes related clauses in contracts with direct business relationships. Stakeholders can raise related concerns and complaints via the company’s grievance mechanism. Lastly, the company is transparent about its lobbying expenditures.

Provide and promote decent work.
The company commits to the health and safety of its workers and expects the same from its business partners. The company also guarantees that all its employees worldwide receive a living wage, explaining how it has been determined for its full-time employees. It collaborates with the FairWage Network to identify and address wage issues in its supply chain, working with industry groups and NGOs to help companies understand and bridge living wage gaps.

The company also discloses the proportion of its direct workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. Additionally, it provides details about the age, gender, and race or ethnicity of its workforce. It emphasizes its commitment to gender equality by setting a target to reach 47-50% female representation across all employees globally by 2025. Lastly, it discloses that currently, women make up 45% of their board members.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights and ILO core labour rights and expects the same from its suppliers.  Moreover, the company describes its process for identifying and assessing human rights risks across its operations and supply chain, discloses what it considers to be its salient human rights issues, and provides a case study on how it has acted on a salient human rights risk issue.

Furthermore, it acknowledges the various stakeholders affected by its activities and provides examples of engaging with them. Additionally, the company has established a human rights grievance mechanism that is accessible to both workers and external stakeholders.

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 beyond materiality assessment. Furthermore, while it discloses the channel it uses to obtain regular employee feedback, it could disclose engagement channels for other stakeholder groups.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets, including climate and social inclusion, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Furthermore, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise concerning 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, and it 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 reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 targets and report progress against its targets.

Impact and dependencies assessment
While the company discloses plans to conduct a biodiversity footprint assessment across its operations and value chain and is undertaking a biodiversity assessment in 2023, it has an opportunity to assess and disclose its impacts on nature, including biodiversity, both within its own operations and in its upstream activities. Additionally, the company could benefit from assessing and disclosing its dependencies on nature in both its own 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 provides information on IUCN categorized species in some operational locations and protection levels of nearby landscapes, it has an opportunity to fully disclose all species adjacent to its own sites. Furthermore, the company could clarify locations adjacent to high biodiversity value areas, both in its own operations and those of its suppliers. Lastly, the company could also benefit from aligning the identified species’ status with national and international conservation lists for greater transparency.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company has an opportunity to disclose all its inputs according to an international standard and report quantitatively on its group-wide circularity performance. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to 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 and work on reducing the production of hazardous substances and waste. It has an opportunity to set and disclose time-bound targets to reduce air pollutants across the most material parts of its value chain. While the company discloses some data on waste and disposal, it has an opportunity to report on the amount of plastic waste generated and the proportions directed from or to disposal.

Water
The company also has an opportunity to disclose a time-bound target to reduce water withdrawal across its operations and reports progress against the target. The company has an opportunity to engage with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal. No evidence was found that the company regularly reports metrics on water pollution, nor does the company have targets to reduce water pollution. The company has an opportunity to disclose its processes for managing and monitoring discharge water quality. The company does not disclose a commitment to respect the right to water.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not disclose a commitment to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Also, the company does not disclose its processes to identify and recognise the rights of Indigenous Peoples when activities in its own operations may impact their rights and describes how it obtains Indigenous Peoples’ free, prior and informed consent.

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 describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations. On lobbying and political engagement, the company has an opportunity to disclose a policy setting out its lobbying and political engagement approach, including a statement around the prohibition of political contributions, and specify whether its policy also applies to third-party lobbyists.

Provide and promote decent work.
The Hershey Company has an opportunity to disclose how it monitors the health and safety performance of its suppliers. Further, the company could disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men in its operations by employee category.