The World Environment Day gives us an opportunity to reflect on the work we have done in the past and look at our evolved approach to sustainability that helps us protect, renew, and restore the environment.
As a company that understands the importance of stewarding resources for the future generations, we understand that we must use raw materials responsibly, safeguarding these shared resources for the future.
This demanding journey towards a more sustainable tomorrow begins with our net zero commitment and efforts to use regenerative agriculture, reducing agriculture's environmental footprint and tackle climate change. However, none of this can be possible without involving our partners and stakeholders. Therefore, we engage our employees as volunteers to give back to the community and actively work with other organizations to take collective action towards a waste-free future, encouraging behavior change.
Through this journey, we aim to strive for zero environmental impact in our operations, with a special focus on reducing the use of water through the Nestlé Waters Pledge, increasing renewable energy use, achieving zero waste to landfill for our factories, and innovating sustainable packaging solutions.
Regenerative Agriculture: An Essential Transformation
Nestlé Pakistan is actively working towards adopting regenerative agriculture practices that improve soil health and fertility, capture carbon in soils and plant biomass. It contributes to drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce emissions of GHGs. These practices also help improve the resilience of farmland to climate change and can therefore help improve famers’ livelihoods. Nestlé understands that to begin working in this area, it needs to partner with farmers and consider the local context aiming to maximize benefits for both the environment and the farmers. While efforts will begin with interventions like cover crops, diversified crop rotation, mulching and crop residue cover, using organic filters and irrigation technology, there are many other practices that will be adopted along the way.
Reducing the use of Water with the Nestlé Waters Pledge
Preserving water resources is part of Nestlé’s legacy. Building on this heritage, Nestlé launched the Waters Pledge in 2021 to commit to regenerating the water used by our Waters Business and have a net positive impact by 2025. The Nestlé Waters Pledge is a reinforcement of our existing water stewardship efforts under our flagship Caring for Water – Pakistan (C4W-Pakistan) initiative, which encourages collective action to bring partners together to discuss and find solutions for the existing water challenges faced by the country. Our water preservation efforts fall under three overarching pillars: factories, communities, and agriculture.
Collective Action towards a Waste-Free Future
In recent years, Gilgit-Baltistan has become a popular attraction for local and foreign tourists, with millions visiting every year. This influx of tourists has created income generation for the local communities but has also become a reason for plastic pollution. Nestlé stepped up and launched ‘Clean Gilgit-Baltistan Project’ (CGBP) in partnership with Gilgit-Baltistan Waste Management Company (GBWMC) to facilitate waste management and recycling in the Gilgit-Baltistan region. It’s our vision to ensure that none of our packaging, including plastics, ends up in landfill or as litter. Till date we have facilitated collection and recycling of over 1000 tons of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and plastic packaging waste in the region.
Facilitated collection and recycling of over
We understand that collective action is the only way forward and our initiative, Travel Responsibly for Experiencing Eco-tourism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (TREK) helps us with that. Together with the World Bank Group (WBG) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Tourism Department, we train hospitality professionals through capacity building sessions at tourist hotspots and encourage behavior change. In the past we have trained nearly 400 hospitality professionals and aired a public awareness campaign.
Trained nearly
Engaging Employee Volunteers under Nestlé Cares
Any sustainable change requires multiple stakeholders and for us our employees are the first to reach. Under our Nestlé Cares program, our employees get the opportunity to participate in environment friendly activities like tree plantations and cleaning activities. Last year, the company planted more than 25,000 trees around our operational sites with the help of our partners. We also organized a beach cleaning activity in Karachi with a significant number of employees participating in the activity.
Planted more than
World Environment Day enables us to take pride in our efforts towards the planet and redirect our energies to be a force for good and use our scale, resources, and expertise to contribute to a healthier future for people and the planet.