We asked our sustainability stakeholders for feedback: 2 areas for improvement

In 2020, we conducted a multifaceted materiality assessment with over 30 sustainability experts from the scientific community and food industry, customers, employees, senior management, investors and suppliers. Their feedback helped us verify our ongoing sustainability efforts for the first time. While their overall assessment was very positive, we’ve managed to identify key areas for improvement.

1. Environmental

The most significant among all stakeholder groups was environmental issues, such as the reduction of carbon emissions, food waste, packaging, responsible ingredient sourcing and animal welfare.

What HelloFresh is doing to improve: 

We’re tackling these issues, and will continue to intensify our efforts, on multiple fronts:

• For the first time we set ourselves tangible targets in the area of carbon emissions and food waste
• We’re also progressing our efforts to reduce packaging waste, including: switching to thinner and softer plastic packaging, eliminating packaging for certain ingredients and switching from plastic to fully paper based packaging for ingredients like grains and rices, all the while ensuring highest quality food safety standards
• We are further strengthening our supply chain and relationships with our suppliers. This includes prioritizing suppliers that make sustainable use of marine resources and land-based ecosystems. 

2. Social & Community

Topics relating to our various external stakeholders, such as multi-level support for our local communities, our suppliers' working conditions, and prevention of corruption and other related topics, were a result of the conversations we had with our sustainability stakeholders. 

What HelloFresh is doing to improve: 

As the world’s largest meal kit provider, we have a responsibility to give back to our community and extensive supplier network: 

• Donations: HelloFresh made donations to the value of over €13 million to organizations around the world. This included cash donations of over €170,000 to food banks
• Ethical Trading Policy: We are committed to ensuring fair and ethical labor conditions of the employees of our suppliers and service providers. This means no forced labor, no child labor, no discrimination, no inhumane treatment and no excessive working hours. Additionally, all suppliers must respect the worker rights of their employees, maintain a safe and hygienic workplace and must pay all wages on time.
• Community outreach: Beyond the Box is our social impact program in the US. The multifaceted program encourages in-kind and monetary donations, seasonal product drives and employee volunteerism. In 2020 this program enabled us to donate over 3.6 million meals to those in need. 
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: We’re both strengthening and acting on our commitment to diversity in tangible, measurable ways. These include our Diversity & Inclusion committees, diversity training, and company-wide events and initiatives. We will continue to double down on our efforts. With employees from nearly 90 different nationalities, this topic is particularly important to me. 

The conducted materiality assessment of sustainability issues reflects not only a fair view of the information requested by our stakeholders, but also helps us shape our vision of sustainability for months and years ahead. We are committed to building on our sustainability efforts from 2020 through 2021 and beyond, as we believe this is the best way that we can change the way people eat – forever.