Our Environment

Home » Sustainability Report 2020 » Pillars of Sustainability » Environment

Running our business sustainably is at the heart of our company vision and purpose.

In 2020, the need to ensure sustainable food production was emphasized more than ever as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world, creating concerns over food security.

As we contribute to the vital effort of providing sustenance for a growing global population, we seek to source, produce and distribute the products we handle reliably and responsibly, respecting our planet’s finite resources and leveraging our prominent position to drive positive change within our sector.

We continually monitor our operations to identify opportunities for improvement and greater efficiency, conserving biodiversity and natural habitats around our operations, setting global, time-bound targets to reduce the environmental impact of our activities, particularly and driving greater product traceability through the value chain.

We embrace these challenges with our stakeholders, setting sustainability-linked standards in our commercial operations and linking these with our financing model.

Biodiversity

At LDC, we are committed to protecting ecosystems around our operations, minimizing our environmental impact and preventing habitat destruction as a result of our activities.

Losing land of high ecological value destroys natural habitats, has knock-on effects for climate change, adversely affects water retention and can disrupt local communities.

Such land is vital to the health of our global ecosystem, and it is our company policy to preserve it to conserve biodiversity.

In 2020, we continued to work to fulfill our commitment to protecting ecosystems in the following ways:

Enforcing our No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) policy, a key focus for our palm and soy businesses.
Defining and implementing Biodiversity Protection and Conservation Plans at our citrus farms in Brazil, as part of which we planted over 49,000 native trees throughout the year.
Training farmers in responsible agricultural practices that preserve habitats, across coffee, cotton, juice, palm and soy supply chains.

Case Study

Planting Trees in Indonesia

Our palm refinery in East Indonesia is located on the coast of the Tempadung River, where mangrove trees are an important element of the local ecosystem.

Mangroves have strong roots that help protect this coastline from erosion caused by large waves, including tsunamis.

In 2020, LDC employees and managers at our refinery helped to plant 1,000 additional mangrove trees here.

Apart from the practical benefits for the local ecosystem, and therefore the welfare of coastal communities, this initiative helped increase public awareness of the importance of the mangrove forest. LDC’s commitment to support and advance local wisdom about conservation is a key part of our efforts.

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Driving Down
Environmental Metrics

Compared to 2019, our assets processed 2% less feedstock in 2020, which increased pressure on our efforts to reach LDC’s targets to reduce environmental indicators per metric ton of production.

Despite this challenge, we improved our performance, exceeding our target to reduce each indicator by 1% year on year.