Deforestation

At Mondelēz International, we believe that more sustainable snacking is about creating a future where people and planet thrive together. As a global snacking company, we are encouraging practices that respect land rights and investing in innovation and technology to increase transparency and measure impact at scale across our supply chain.

We strategically continue to focus on where we believe we can make an impact and where the world needs it most. Deforestation is a major environmental challenge that has been caused by various factors, including global consumption. Deforestation is a risk because of its contribution to global climate change as well as its impact on local communities and ecosystem services in affected areas. Therefore, it is important to take action to help reduce deforestation and promote more sustainable land use practices.

Our goal is to seek no deforestation across our primary commodities following a phased approach starting with our European Business by 30 December 2024 and roll out to our other regions by 31 December 2025. The cutoff date, which is the date after which deforestation is counted in a company’s supply chain, is 31 December 2020 in accordance with EU Deforestation Regulation and SBTi guidance.

• For cocoa and palm¹, two commodities we source that are considered at-risk when it comes to deforestation, we engage with our key suppliers to supply only deforestation-free cocoa and palm to Mondelēz International.
• We also call on our suppliers to take efforts to end deforestation in their supply chains.
• While focus lies on cocoa and palm oil we also consider, soy¹ and pulp and paper in our deforestation-free approach.

For a decade we have had our cocoa sustainability program in place, Cocoa Life, which aims to holistically help address the root causes of the social, economic and environmental challenges that cocoa farming faces. We aim to source all of the cocoa volume for our chocolate brands by 2025 through our Cocoa Life program. Since 2016, we have mapped Cocoa Life farms online. We have partnered with Global Forest Watch to implement satellite image mapping practices to forest-monitor Cocoa Life farms.

After raising the issue of cocoa-based deforestation in 2015 at COP21 in Paris, in 2017 Mondelez International became a founding member of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI), alongside the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and 36 other world-leading chocolate and cocoa companies to help decrease deforestation and restore forest areas.

In palm oil, we have been RSPO certified since 2013 and continue to evolve in line with further deforestation-free requirements. We publish our mill list on our corporate website and engage with our suppliers to provide traceability to the mill and to be deforestation-free for palm oil supplied to Mondelēz International.

Our Palm Oil Action Plan requires suppliers to take responsibility for eliminating deforestation in their own operation and upstream supply chain by mapping and monitoring all plantations and suspending companies involved in deforestation.

Since we account for very little of the total global demand for palm oil, we recognize that we alone cannot transition the sector to a more sustainable supply. That’s why we lead or are active participants in leading global organizations focused on improving the palm oil supply chain, including the Consumer Goods Forum Forest Positive Coalition (CGF FPC), Consumer Goods Forum Human Rights Coalition (CGF HRC), Palm Oil Transparency Coalition (POTC), Palm Oil Collaboration Group (POCG), and Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

For our direct purchases of soy, where we have much less influence across the sector as a whole, we take a due diligence approach designed to achieve more sustainable sourcing in our supply, based on Consumer Goods Forum sourcing guidelines. In addition, we also track indirect land-use change emissions from dairy, arising from raw materials, such as soy, used in cattle feed. We buy the majority of our dairy ingredients from suppliers who buy from farmers who, in turn, make individual decisions about what to feed their cows. Despite these challenges, we are engaging our suppliers with the aim of supporting moves to help achieve deforestation-free supplies of cattle feed across the dairy sector.

For pulp and paper, we require the mills and printers that supply us to be Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified. As part of our strategy implementation by end of 2025, we aim to leverage chain of custody certification programs to confirm that virgin paper packaging we use is sourced from sustainably managed forests.

No company can win the fight against deforestation alone. We support and encourage a sector-wide approach to help prevent deforestation. Action by individual companies needs to be scaled up to cover whole sectors, landscapes and countries. So, we support and encourage the sector-wide approach the Consumer Good Forum is pioneering for a forest positive future. One where suppliers adhere to consistent practices across their business models and land use is better optimized across sectors with the support of producer governments.