Sustainability policies
Sustainability
Building a sustainable future starts with a better way of doing business today.
Sustainability at Wonderfield Group is about better food for everyone. For us, this means food that has low impact on the environment and a socially inclusive approach to business, built upon a culture of trust.
Introducing Changing Tides
As a leading international, multi-channel food and restaurant business, we recognise our responsibility to provide products that are kind to both planet and people, now and into the future.
Wonderfield Group has the unique ability to do something different, new, or unique (CHANGE) and to impact the way people think or feel (TIDES). The logo icon brings together the land and sea which are equally important and which we respect and value. As a company we aim to LEAD WITH PURPOSE within the industry. To be successful, we need to ground our strategy in substance – and we will be evidencing our impact over time on our most material areas through transparent and consistent reporting. That's why we are proud to introduce our ESG program Changing Tides - Richard Hodgson, Wonderfield Group CEO.
Our commitment to sustainability
With a vision of being a sustainability leader, our strategy is focused on our approach to tackling our most material areas:
Our planet
Serving better food means doing so with a lower impact on the environment. We are aiming to minimise our impact by reducing our energy use and carbon footprint across our supply chain, in our operations and in our consumer experience.
Our people
Our people are at the heart of our success. We will continue to foster an entrepreneurial and inclusive culture, while supporting the communities we operate in and serve.
Our products
We know great food can be healthy, delicious, and responsibly sourced. We work closely with our suppliers and industry partners to continuously improve the traceability and transparency of our products.
Our approach
Continuous improvement has always been an important part of our DNA.
In todays’ rapidly changing world, now more than ever before, we recognise the need to continuously assess our impacts and improve our sustainability performance wherever we can. Working together with sustainability experts, industry partners, and suppliers, in 2021 we completed an in-depth materiality assessment to comprehensively map out our business, to better understand where our biggest impacts are and where we have the best opportunities to make a positive difference.
Our four ESG pillars
We have identified four Environmental focus areas to help prioritise our efforts and to help guide and challenge us to be the best we can be, across each of our brands.
Food waste
Growing food to feed the world’s increasing population uses vast areas of land, and abundant amounts of energy and water, which can create social and environmental impacts, pollution, and waste.
Energy use
As part of a global food and hospitality business, we have an obligation to do all that we can to reduce our impacts.
Responsible sourcing
Responsibly sourcing high-quality seafood, eggs and meat is extremely important to us, and we have stringent sourcing criteria to determine our purchasing decisions.
Plastics & packaging
We recognise that to continue to provide the freshest, highest quality food, we need to protect the environments in which our food and products are produced, transported, consumed, repurposed, and disposed of.
Green house gas & energy use
We have already carried out an initial Scope 1, 2 & 3 baseline of our green-house gas (GHG) emissions use across the Group, helping us to understand where we can make the biggest reductions, and on which aspects of our operations and supply chain to focus on.
Our ambitions:
- At present, we are in the process of obtaining better quality data on our emissions across our value chain. We will then assess the best method to implementing a suitable target that is both ambitious and aligned to Group growth plans
- Aim to achieve Net Zero Commitment by 2050
Food waste
Growing food to feed the world’s increasing population uses vast areas of land, and abundant amounts of energy and water, which can create social and environmental impacts, pollution, and waste.
To minimise food waste, we have:
- Partnered with Too Good To Go in the UK and Canada & US, a food diversion App that enables consumers to buy our food at discounted rates when it is still deliciously fresh, but is soon to come to the end of its’ shelf life.
- Recently partnered with OLIO in the UK - the food waste hero program that works to eliminate food insecurity for local families. Rather than sending our overproduced items to waste and landfills, we redistribute and donate it to the community.
- Joined composting programs with our grocery retailer partners in Canada to divert processed and out of date products from landfill.
Our ambitions:
- As we build data and knowledge regarding our GHG Scope 3 footprint, this also includes food waste data. We are aiming to set quantitative targets on food waste across kiosks, restaurants, and commissaries.
- In parallel, we will continue to implement effective impactful solutions to reduce our current food waste utilizing aspects of the food recovery hierarchy.
Responsible sourcing
Fish & seafood
Responsibly sourcing high-quality seafood is extremely important to us, and we have stringent sourcing criteria to determine our purchasing decisions.
We are a member of The Global Tuna Alliance (GTA) and in the UK we are members of The Sustainable Seafood Coalition (SSC) and make sourcing decisions based on their Codes of Conduct and implementation plans, which includes a structured risk assessment process.
Eggs
In the UK, our eggs are free range, and we are working to ensure that the liquid eggs that we use are also free range. All eggs used in mayonnaise or as an ingredient in the UK are cage free.
Meat
Animal welfare is important to us at Wonderfield Group and we continue to implement processes within our sourcing strategy to ensure that the protein products purchased meet our standards.
Higher welfare for broiler chickens is a key area that we are supporting with significant resources. Wonderfield Group companies do not process or raise chickens directly. We purchase from suppliers, and it is our responsibility to ensure that we partner with suppliers that are aligned with our commitment to higher animal welfare standards.
We're proud to be supported by Compassion in World Farming, a leading global animal welfare NGO on this work. We believe for change to happen we need to work collectively as an industry. This is why we have signed-up to the European and North American Chicken Commitment and pledge to continue to improve our welfare standards for each of our businesses.
In 2022 we began to track supplier compliance against the Better Chicken Commitment standards and as of January 1, 2023 we are able to report on the following progress with our suppliers.
| UK Operations (Taiko Foods & YO! combined) | North America Operations (Bento & Snowfox JFE combined) | |
| Stock density | 16% compliant | 11% compliant |
| Lighting - 50 LUX | 35% compliant | 0% compliant |
| Enrichment | 75% compliant | 17% compliant |
| CAS | 83% compliant | 17% compliant |
| 3rd party auditing | 70% compliant | 17% compliant |
| BCC approved breeds | 0% compliant | 0% compliant |
We had a goal to develop a detailed roadmap by the end of 2023. We are continuing this work by gathering the necessary information from our suppliers and working internally with cross functional teams to understand the opportunities and obstacles to create an achievable roadmap. To ensure that we publish a robust roadmap that we have confidence in, we will continue working with support from Compassion in World Farming to publish a detailed roadmap by mid-2024.
Our ambitions:
- 100% of tuna, salmon, shrimp, and surimi will be sustainably sourced by end of 2023.
- 100% of other key ingredients (chicken, beef, rice, etc.) will be responsibly sourced by end of 2025.
Plastics, packaging & paper
Our focus is on minimising our demand on our natural resources and maximising the efficiency with which we use them. We support the US, Canadian and UK Plastics Pact and are looking at how we can collaborate with innovative and creative suppliers and industry partners to work holistically to reduce the demand and our impact of our primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging.
Our ambitions:
- All primary plastic packaging will be 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.
- 30% average post-consumer recycled content across all plastic packaging by 2025.
- Eliminate all unnecessary and problematic plastic by 2025.