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Environment
Reducing our environmental impact
Our environmental challenges
Our activities – from growing cocoa to selling chocolate – have an impact on the environment. At Valrhona, we are committed to minimizing these impacts. This makes sense from a commercial point of view, but also and most importantly to guarantee us a healthy future and a healthy planet.
Valrhona has chosen to align with the global move towards carbon neutrality. So that we can combat climate change and make a meaningful transition towards an environmentally friendly way of working, we have made exact calculations of our emissions a priority. This will enable us to take action and, most importantly, to reduce the emissions we make.
Our objectives and progress
-66% of GHG (greenhouse gas emissions)
(scope 1 & 2) since 2013. Objective for 2025: -60% - achieved
91% of waste
is recovered. Objective for 2025: 100%.
71% of renewable energies
in the energy mix. Objective for 2025: 79%.
83% of packaging
is recyclable. Objective for 2025: -100%.
100% of new products
meet our eco-design criteria. Objective for 2025: 100% - Achieved
-18% of global waste production
Versus 2013. Objective for 2025: 50% reduction.
-40% of tap water consumption
(and 67% less groundwater used) since 2013. Objective for 2025: 50% decrease.
-39% of total energy consumption
since 2013. Objective for 2025: 50% decrease.
Cocoa’s impact on the environment
The climate crisis is the greatest challenge of our time. At Valrhona, we know that the future of our planet, not to mention our company, depends on our ability to put the climate first in everything we do – every decision, every action, every investment.
Cocoa plays a major role in Valrhona’s carbon footprint, so our ambition is to reduce its impact via a sourcing strategy.
Eco-design
Our aim is to offer our customers increasingly responsible products. Our stakeholders judge our products’ quality and sustainability by their ingredients and recipes – but also by the packaging and materials they use. Valrhona is working to ensure its products have an environmental design that completely lives up to customer expectations while also reducing our impact on the planet and its natural resources.
By thinking about packaging’s recyclability from the design stage onwards, Valrhona has taken up a challenge as it launches its new Gifting range: Doing better but using less. This product range has been designed in line with our ambitions to achieve 100% recyclability by 2025.
Transport
In order to limit its direct emissions, Valrhona has also adopted a transport policy that supports the reduction of GHG emissions linked to employee travel.
Since November 2019, we have been participating in the French government’s FRET21 initiative to reduce our transport emissions, including, for example, minimizing air freight transportation.
Thanks to the actions it undertook as part of FRET21, Valrhona prevented more than 515 tons of CO2 from being emitted in 2022. Valrhona has renewed its commitment to this approach and hopes to reduce C02 emissions by 940 tons between now and 2024.
Reusability: “La Consigne by Valrhona” returnable packaging scheme and reusing our resources
Driven by our zero-waste objective, Returnable Packaging by Valrhona is the name of our ambitious project to reinvent how customers handle the packaging we produce.
Launched in 2020 and based on circular economy principles, this project involves trialing deliveries of new packaging which is then recovered, washed and reintroduced into production processes. In 2022, Returnable Packaging by Valrhona represented 22 tons of chocolate sold since its launch.
Energy
Processing cocoa into chocolate requires a lot of energy. If we want to reduce our carbon footprint, it is essential to improve our energy consumption. We are committed to reducing the amount of energy we use to make our chocolate and to promoting the use of renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.
As part of our efforts to be an exemplary manufacturer in terms of energy consumption, we are proud to say that for the past four years, 100% of our electricity has come from certified purchases of hydroelectric power.
Through these energy purchases under Guarantee of Origin Certificates, we help finance the renewable energy sector.
Water management
Minimizing our environmental footprint also means reducing our water consumption in our industrial activities.
In the manufacturing of its chocolates, Valrhona strives to limit its environmental impact, pollution and resource consumption.
We are now devoting particular attention to our water usage, with the specific objective of cutting our 2013 consumption rates in half by 2025.
Waste management
As a business that uses raw ingredients to make chocolate, we are making every effort to limit the amount of waste we produce and improve the ways we recycle and recover.
Our objectives for 2025: to achieve our target of recovering 100% of our waste, while cutting in half the amount we generate as compared to 2013.
In 2021, through the efforts of our teams, we were able to recover 100% of the waste from the stone picking workshop. Since February, 27 tons of leaf residue, pieces of wood and other plantation waste have been transformed into compost, when in the past they would have simply been buried. This effective measure, among others, has enabled the company to increase its rate of waste reuse from 80% in 2013 to 91.3% in 2021.
This means that for a kilogram of waste produced, 652g was used as raw material for another product (co-product), 255g was recycled or reused, and 12.5g was recovered for energy.
Portraits of Valrhona Experts
Safety & Environment - Elisande Bourry x Nicolas Ghibaudo
B Corp - Audrey Vicenzi
Eco-design - Claudie Bochart & Pierre Martinet
Transport - Guillaume Sempere