Sustainability standards are counterproductive

Governments and buyers around the world are increasing expectations around sustainability claims, due diligence, climate reporting, and responsible sourcing. However, while the goals are often similar, the requirements are not. Panelists debated on how can we ensure sustainability information is credible, comparable, and useful without creating an overwhelming patchwork of reporting requirements?

Dutch and US organizations testify

The invited panelists were Myrtille Danse from Solidaridad Network NGO in The Netherlands, Nikki Hulzebos from the Fresh Produce Centre (NL), Tamara Muruetagoiena from the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA) in the United States. The panel discussion started with a survey to the audience which revealed that a majority annually receive more than 10 requests of audits or survey from sustainability standards, questionnaires or reporting requests that the produce organizations deal with every year.

Time available to take action reduces

Tamara shared a members survey to the sustainability managers which reveals they spend in average 75% of their time with compliance, like filling data reports, remaining 25% actually taking actions on sustainability initiatives. It means every new addon-on regulatory scheme addressed to a supplier actually moves away the organization from actually taking action to improve sustainability. “Regulatory makers often lack of knowledge of the produce industry while they are adding new conformity rules” stated Tamara. “The multiplication of standards is obviously counter productive”.

How to harmonize sustainability claims

⁠Panelists were questioned their advice on how to move from fragmented frameworks to global alignment on ESG reporting. For Myrtille Danse a new standard or changing regulation to get successful implementation needs to get awarded from the market to have a chance to be successful, since they often require additional investment and labor to be implemented. For Nikki Hulzebos it is rather time for the sector to strongly claim that fruit and vegetables are sustainable, nutritious and healthy, for this reason they deserve to be “claim-free”. He gives the example of Ecoscore recently added in the food industry, it follows Nutriscore now widely used, where fruit and vegetables obviously get the highest ranking. Tamara denounced the “turbulent times” in the standardization of sustainability where in average 15 new standards appear in the food industry. About 300 schemes exist today in the food industry. This has to stop and one single sustainability standard shall prevail for the produce industry.

For more information, trends and strategies about sustainability claims for fruit and vegetables, you can click here.