Environmental Policy
Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
Since day one, our team at Righteous has had an unwavering commitment to enrich people’s lives, one tiny spoonful at a time.
We are Righteous. A young group of like-minded individuals crazy enough to think we can change the world, and leave it a little bit better than we found it.
In our relentless pursuit to leave it better than we found it, Righteous Gelato is committed to working with our business partners, suppliers and internal manufacturing processes to be sustainable in all of our business practices.
As a company, we have a responsibility to our team, customers and business partners to strive towards continued environmental responsibility and to ensure that our business has the least impact on our planet and its ecosystems. As such, we require all of our suppliers and business partners to identify, track and report on a number of metrics to ensure we are meeting our environmental goals. We will work with them to set targets, provide resources to help monitor and audit our collective performance to meet our objectives.
‘The typical consumer company’s supply chain creates far greater social and environmental costs than its own operations, accounting for more than 80 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions and more than 90 percent of the impact on air, land, water, biodiversity, and geological resources. Consumer companies can thus reduce those costs significantly by focusing on their supply chains.’ – McKinsey & Company “Sustainability in Supply Chains”.
As such, we must focus on our own operations and direct footprint as well as all aspects of our supply chain, particularly our suppliers, to ensure we are not only meeting, but exceeding, our annual targets for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, water, waste and biodiversity impact reductions.
Purpose
This policy is to be used to ensure that our business practices, operations, supplier selection, manufacturing processes and corporate operations support our goals of continued progress towards a net-zero supply chain loop in all environmental categories, in support of our overall corporate sustainability targets.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG)
Greenhouse gases are gases in Earth’s atmosphere that trap heat. They let sunlight pass through the atmosphere, but they prevent the heat that the sunlight brings from leaving the atmosphere. The main greenhouse gases are:
Water vaporCarbon dioxide
Methane
Ozone
Nitrous oxide
Chlorofluorocarbons
Greenhouse gas emissions can be minimized by a number of variables, including the choice of source location and the associated transportation footprint to get products to their final destination as well as the greenhouse gasses generated during the growing, harvesting, production, packaging and transportation of all components of our supply chain.
To track and manage greenhouse gases in our business, Righteous will:
- Track and monitor internal Scope 1 and 2 emissions and set targets for ourselves
- Reduce or maintain our scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions as we grow
- Track source location with an effort to source ingredients and components locally, where practical
- Identify and select suppliers who actively track and monitor their greenhouse gas emissions, with a clear goal to reduce their overall emissions.
- Provide resources and support to our suppliers to track and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
- Monitor and audit to ensure that our suppliers and business partners are actively working towards the set targets and maintaining proper records
Water
Water is essential to most manufacturing processes and also poses the greatest opportunity for a reduction in environmental footprint across our supply chain.
Understanding that our business is primarily manufacturing based when it comes to our ingredient and finished product production, water use reduction is a key goal for Righteous. We are committed to tracking water use across our entire supply chain to monitor areas of water use and work with our suppliers to collectively reduce the water footprint of our business.
We set annual targets for water use reductions both within our own manufacturing processes and those of our suppliers and business partners.
Water recycling, reuse and reduction of consumption is critical to honoring our commitment to the sustainable growth of our business and being stewards of our environment.
We work with our suppliers to ensure that they are setting targets, monitoring and tracking their water use across their operations and we will analyse, monitor and require reporting from our suppliers to ensure we are all working proactively towards a reduced water use supply chain.
Waste
To support our corporate goals towards overall sustainability, it is important that we identify and report on the waste in our system, so that we can effectively monitor and assess progress towards our set targets of waste reduction across the business. Waste can be generated from a number of processes and must be recognized and quantified in order to measure progress towards reduction. Sources of waste in the supply chain include:
- Defects in production resulting in unsellable products
- Overproduction - results in unsold product
- Waiting – idle time for transportation modes, machine idle time
- Transportation – excess use of less than truck load transportation, long haul trucking on a rush basis
- Excessive processing of ingredients and packaging
- Reject goods and packaging
- By-products as a result of primary production
To monitor waste both internally and amongst our suppliers, Righteous will implement annual targets, key metrics and an audit process to ensure that our production, suppliers and business partners are working towards our collective goal of waste reduction in our supply chain.
Biodiversity
Righteous employs a biodiversity-conscious approach to supply chain management. Our goal is for a net zero or net-positive impact on biodiversity in our areas of manufacture and harvesting/sourcing. This includes the sourcing and selection of suppliers who employ sustainable farming, harvesting and manufacturing processes. Throughout our supply chain, it is critical to us that we conduct our sourcing and production in such a way that has minimal impact on our surrounding environment and ecosystem. We also require and monitor this in our suppliers to ensure minimal or net-positive impact on biodiversity. We set annual targets for a number of environmental impact metrics that are required throughout our supply chain. We verify this through audits, supplier measurement and corrective actions, as needed.
In support of our biodiversity strategy, we will require our suppliers to take action to:
- Avoid biodiversity impacts
- Minimize those impacts that do occur
- Restore or rehabilitate degraded ecosystems
- Offset their biodiversity impact wherever possible
Hazardous Waste and Toxins
Hazardous waste and toxins are a key area of focus in our supply chain. It is critical for the finished product quality of our gelato and therefore our ingredients are mandated clean label and it is critical that we monitor and audit our suppliers on this metric. We evaluate, monitor and audit our suppliers to identify any potential risks of toxins and/or production of hazardous waste and select suppliers that align with Righteous’ sustainability goals.
We set a target of zero hazardous and toxic waste produced and will continue to monitor and audit for compliance. Amongst our suppliers and business partners we will identify, reduce and eliminate toxins and hazardous waste associated with the production and delivery of our products.
Source Reductions
We strive to continuously identify opportunities for source reduction in our supply chain. This includes minimization of unnecessary packaging, a clear focus on utilization of post-consumer or industrial recycled components as well as an overall reduction in packaging weight and volume. We will select and monitor our supplies based on key metrics, including what percentage of material (by volume) comes from recycled materials, reused components, and/or certified sustainably sourced materials.