NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / December 7, 2022 / The Hershey Company
We want to drive positive and lasting change around the world. Using our expertise and strong partnerships, we're responding to global challenges with local care.
Supporting Our Communities Through COVID-19
The global pandemic continued to impact communities around the world throughout 2021. When the Delta variant threatened in-person learning in fall 2021, we revived our mask distribution program. We dispatched over 575,000 masks to nonprofits and students across dozens of school districts. When the pandemic devastated India, our local team acted rapidly by distributing 500 oxygen concentrators to hospitals across the country. In addition, we made a $50,000 commitment with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) GiveIndia and Milaap to assist hospitals with procuring ventilators, oxygen concentrators and cylinders. Our Hershey Brazil team donated $169,000 for pandemic relief, which was used to provide food baskets, hospital materials and equipment. In the U.S., we organized multiple on-site vaccine clinics for employees and their dependents (aged five and over) who wanted to get vaccinated or receive a booster shot. We also continued our flexible working conditions so that corporate employees could keep working from home and via a hybrid in-office work environment. We focused on the health and safety of all our employees working in-person by continuing to provide proper personal protective equipment (PPE), COVID-19 antigen home tests and physically distanced workspaces.
More information about Hershey's actions providing pandemic support in 2021 may be found throughout the 2021 ESG Report.
Becoming Stronger Together
Investing in our people is always a worthwhile investment. From building more inclusive workplaces to supporting employee wellness, we are continuously finding more ways to better support the Hershey workforce of today and tomorrow. Through our Pathways Project we committed to achieving a college recruiting portfolio that is at least 50% diverse. To help us meet this target, we added 23 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-serving Institutions (HSIs) to our roster of schools we recruit from. We are also incredibly proud to have been named as the World's Top Female Friendly Company by Forbes for the inaugural ranking. We continue to offer SmartFlex benefits programs that enable employees to achieve a better work/life balance and our programs to provide resources that support physical and mental health. For more information, see page 67.
Making a Bigger Commitment to Combat Climate Change
Addressing climate change and meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement demands change in how our world works and the way we use resources. To play our part, we announced science-based greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals in March 2021. The goal commits us to cutting our absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 50% and our absolute Scope 3 emissions by 25% by 2030, against a 2018 baseline. We're already taking action to meet our goal, including signing power purchase agreements (PPAs) that will enable the construction of three new utility-scale solar farms. We also made substantial progress toward our Scope 1 and 2 emissions targets through improvements in energy efficiency. To reduce value chain emissions (Scope 3), we committed to eliminate commodity-driven deforestation from our ingredient supply chains by 2030 and are investing in sustainable packaging solutions. For more information, see page 49.
Working to Eliminate Child Labor in Cocoa
Our investment in cocoa communities is continuing to help improve lives in West Africa. To monitor, prevent and remediate instances of child labor, we remain committed to 100% sourcing visibility by 2025 for farmers in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, and continue to ensure 100% of the cocoa volume we source in these countries is covered by a Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS) by 2025. In 2021, Hershey supported CLMRS covered nearly 103,000 children, and we expect to increase that to approximately 125,000 children by 2025. In addition, through our Energize Learning school feeding program, Hershey is distributing ViVi, a highly nutritious peanut-based therapeutic food, to 45,000 children daily in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. For more information, see page 24.
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