Among other successes, the company achieved its water use goal one year early, reducing water use by 30 million gallons since 2009. The report is self-declared Application Level A as confirmed by the Global Reporting Initiative.
This is the fourth full report the company has released covering environmental and social performance and the fifth report overall highlighting the company’s commitment to being a good corporate citizen. This year’s theme, “Elevate the Everyday, Our Way,” emphasizes the company’s desire to build upon its heritage of innovation and quality when conducting its day-to-day business activities.
“With our unwavering commitment to corporate responsibility, Hormel Foods continues to ‘Elevate the Everyday, Our Way’,” said Jeffrey M. Ettinger, chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer at Hormel Foods. “Through continuous improvement, we endeavor to reduce our impact on the environment, act responsibly and provide value to our shareholders as we plan for the future.”
This year’s report details the company’s performance in fiscal year 2010 to reduce water use and solid waste going to landfill, as well as strategic philanthropic efforts and industry-leading employee safety performance; it also outlines new initiatives in key areas such as health and wellness and food safety.
Key highlights about the company’s corporate responsibility performance and initiatives include:
- Hormel Foods created Spammy™, a fortified, shelf-stable turkey spread to help address childhood malnutrition throughout the world. The company made an initial three-year commitment to deliver 1 million cans of Spammy™ to in-need families in Guatemala through partners Food For The Poor and Caritas Arquidiocesana in 2011.
- Hormel Foods donated more than $5.7 million in products and cash to charitable organizations focused on education and hunger efforts.
- The company reduced water use by 11 percent, solid waste to landfill by 28 percent and direct energy use by 6 percent when normalized for production from the baseline year of 2006.
- In select products, Hormel Foods reduced sodium by 8 percent in 2010.
- The Progressive Processing LLC (Dubuque, Iowa) production facility was awarded LEED® Gold and became one of the first manufacturing plants to be a LEED-certified project at any level. LEED certification is the recognized standard for measuring building sustainability.
The 2010 Hormel Foods Corporate Responsibility Report is the third consecutive report that can be found entirely online. An additional 12-page executive summary is also available, which provides a condensed version of the full report along with key highlights. The online report can be accessed and the summary can be downloaded at www.hormelfoods.com/csr.
In honor of launching the fifth overall report, Hormel Foods will feature an online contest in which the company donates $5 to Feeding America for every retweet on Twitter announcing the release of the 2010 Hormel Foods Corporate Responsibility Report, up to $5,000. Feeding America is the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity.
Hormel Foods plans to continue reporting on its environmental and social performance annually; the next report will be released in May 2012 for data spanning November 2010 to October 2011. The company is a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and Maplecroft Climate Innovation Indexes. Hormel Foods was also named to the Global 1000 Sustainable Performance Leaders list and was named one of “The 100 Most Trustworthy Companies” by Forbes in 2010.
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