Our view on sustainable entrepreneurship
Sustainability runs like a recurrent theme throughout our activities and corporate culture. In fact, 'sustainable value creation' has been at the heart of our mission since 2007. Every day, we continue our efforts to make a meaningful difference together.
Why is sustainable entrepreneurship important for Colruyt Group?
- Care for the environment: as a company, we inevitably make use of raw materials and energy sources. We want to do this with maximum respect for the earth and its natural boundaries. Because protecting the planet means protecting the future. 'Prevention' - what we don't consume - is a recurrent theme throughout our approach.
- Maximum efficiency: with a minimum of raw materials, energy and human effort, we want to ensure maximum meaningful economic added value and human development.
- Social connection: as a retailer, we have an impact on our workers, customers, suppliers, partners, society, etc. We want to be meaningful to everyone involved in our company, near and far.
Our ambition: a reference for sustainable entrepreneurship and a source of inspiration for conscious consumption, across the whole value chain.
What impact does Colruyt Group have across the chain?
A retailer with its own production departments, we have an impact across the entire supply chain.
- Raw materials: we build sustainable partnerships with suppliers, farmers and other stakeholders and monitor them in the field.
- Processing, transport and sales: by making energy consumption, water use, goods transport and the like more sustainable, we want to avoid or reduce negative effects. At the same time, we assume a positive pioneering role through innovation.
- Use: we inform and inspire our customers to make more conscious choices.
- Waste/recycling: we are constantly working on innovative solutions for packaging, food loss, reuse of materials, etc.
How is our sustainability policy structured?
Product, infrastructure and people are the basis of our sustainability policy. We want to create sustainable added value for these three driving forces. The purpose? Making tangible progress in various fields through innovation and cooperation, our 'sites'. We do this with more than 150 concrete projects through which we also contribute to the sustainability goals of the United Nations. We also involve our customers in our sustainability efforts with our 'Step by Step' themes.
For each of these twelve themes, we formulate goals to achieve a positive impact, in every link of the chain.
We contribute to the sustainability goals of the United Nations.
More information and inspiration about health, society, animal welfare and environment, we want to help our customers to make more conscious choices.
In order to achieve our ambitious sustainability goals, we have set up many concrete projects.
How do we measure how sustainable we are?
No pretence: we want to generate a tangible, effective impact. We measure this using internationally recognised and scientifically supported methodologies, which look at all facets of sustainability, across the entire value chain/life cycle. Such as the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF).
This gives us an insight into the actual impact we create with our products, services and organisation, and where we can improve. Only in this way can we balance the various forms of impact and find a good balance for people and planet.
