Our sustainability update 2022-2023
Sustainability report
Sustainable Entrepreneurship
As one of the leading German trading companies for nuts and dried fruit, Nutwork Handelsgesellschaft mbH supplies the German and European food retailers with products from more than 50 countries worldwide.
We are aware of our responsibility to create sustainable supply chains and are committed to comply with laws, standards of conduct and human rights along our entire value chain.
We have high expectations in terms of protection of human rights, of both us and our suppliers. These expectations are set out in our Declaration of Principles on Respect for Human Rights (German).
Our core values of collaboration, entrepreneurship, quality, and responsibility are also reflected in our partnerships. We cooperate with stakeholders at national as well as international level to promote sustainable development along the entire value chain.
The long-established Waren-Verein (Hamburg) has been a competent partner for political decision-makers and authorities for decades. Together, we promote sustainable supply chains and the necessary political framework. On international level, we are a member of the Sustainable Nut Initiative (SNI). The SNI is a precompetitive cooperation platform that brings all stakeholders in the nut supply chain together who are committed to a more sustainable nut industry.
Sustainable Supply Chains
The sustainability of our products is largely determined by the actions of our suppliers. It is our declared objective to develop sustainable supply chains together with our suppliers. With this in mind, we have formulated a Code of Conduct for our suppliers.
The Code of Conduct outlines our sustainability expectations for our suppliers and is applicable along the entire value chain. Our goal is to jointly create sustainable products.
Through a regularly updated risk analysis, we assess the human rights and environmental risks for all of our supply regions and partners. In case of identified risks, we engage with our suppliers and discuss measures to minimize them.
Our mission is to actively create sustainable supply chains. We follow this path together with our suppliers and support them with the implementation.
We recognize that despite all our efforts, violations may occur. Our complaints management system, in accordance with the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, ensures a trustworthy and transparent approach to complaints about human rights or environmental violations.
Tackling Climate Change
We calculate our greenhouse gas emissions for our entire value chain (scope 1-3). We do not only calculate our climate footprint, but we also reduce it through concrete measures. In order to do so, we set science-based targets for decarbonizing our operations and supply chains in line with international agreements.
Our own production facility offers high potential for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, we have already started to optimize processes with concrete measures to reduce our energy consumption. Thus, we are already using energy-efficient air compressors and have drastically reduced our natural gas consumption.
On a company-wide level, we took measures such as switching over to green electricity for all companies of the entire group. However, we are only at the beginning of our sustainability journey and have identified a variety of potentials to become more sustainable with our operation.
Protection of the Environment
We trade natural products - so protecting our environment is a priority for us. We have laid down our environmental goals in our Environmental Policy (German).
We want to preserve resources and reduce our water consumption wherever possible.
We are committed to preserving and actively promoting habitats and biodiversity. Based on a risk analysis, we identify our specific impact on biodiversity of our direct business environment, in order to minimize or eliminate potential negative impacts.
We mostly use organic cleaning products, which are in line with our organic certification. This also reduces the negative impact on our wastewater.
Where possible, we close the resource cycle and avoid waste. We are also constantly working on increasing our recycling rate to return raw materials, such as plastic and cellulose fibers, back to the cycle.
