Global Leader in Sustainable Snacking Takes Stock of Environmental Impact
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia– October 1, 2020 –Mondel?z International ( Malaysia) celebrated its second annual Purpose Day to reinforce and reinforce its commitment towards Sustainable Snacking, while also recognizing the company’s 8th anniversary on the same day.
“Purpose Day is an intentional and powerful moment for our teams to celebrate, reflect, and most importantly, activate our Purpose in unison,” said James Kane, Managing Director, Mondel?z International Malaysia & Singapore. “This year, we are leaning into our enterprise priority of environmental sustainability by reducing water, waste and energy with a theme of ‘getting our hands green for the planet.’ While the pandemic has created challenges for people around the world, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to invite our 80,000 colleagues around the world to do their part to live more sustainable lives and demonstrate that we are stronger together even when we’re apart.”
To kick off the global event, Mondel?z International CEO Dirk Van de Put hosted a LinkedIn Live Sustainability Snack Chat last September 30, featuring sustainability experts.
Employees around the world were also invited to get their hands green through a variety of virtual and socially-distanced face-to-face activities where possible. More than 25,000 colleagues participated in environmental micro-actions that were done at home individually or with their family. About 12,000 people volunteered with local envinronmental organzations to help make our planet a little greener, and many colleagues joined the 40 virtual “Green Chats” about the company’s sustainability priorities and progress.
In Malaysia, local activities were also executed in the weeks leading up to Purpose Day. First was a competition to create upcycling products to be donated to Mondel?z International‘s adopted schools, Joy Schools. This was done to encourage employees to use any single-use plastics or recyclable materials from their homes for the purpose of creating another usable product. Three winners were selected for outstanding inventions of upcycling ideas.
In line with efforts to reduce waste, Mondel?z Malaysia also collaborated with Food Aid Foundation to eradicate food wastage and contribute food aid to the less fortunate. Through the partnership, excess food which would otherwise end up in landfill will be redistributed and chanelled to charities and B40 families to help reduce their food bill. During recent engagements, 4420 cases of Mondel?z International’s products were contributed to the food bank.
As part of knowledge sharing, 2 ‘Green Chat‘ sessions were held to educate employees on Upcycling and also to increase awareness on Mondel?z’s global commitment of making the packaging recycle-ready. During the session, Mr William Koong, an upcycling expert from Me.reka (a social enterprise that champions progressive ideas on sustainability) shared his thoughts, “It is important to continue this upcycling lifestyle. Although it is simple, but if 100,000 people do this, the act will be multiplied by 100,000-fold. When there is a demand for products made from waste, there will be a supply. This is the best way to reduce waste in order to keep our environment stays clean and the same time we have a second life ‘new’ products which is usable. ”
One of the employee’s initiative : Turning packaging bag to polybags to grow plants
Julia Wang, Section Manager in Packaging Sustainability AMEA, Mondel?z International, also pointed out in her Green Chat session “it’s collective effort of manufactures, governments, retailers and consumers to work together to deliver the packaging sustainability agenda. For us Mondel?z to fulfill our 2025 commitment of implementing a packaging circular economy, we need to collaborate internally to embark on a well-funded innovation agenda; proactively engage with external partners to improve infrastructure for recycling, eliminate leakage to nature; and last but not least, implement on-pack recycling instruction and rollout educational interventions.”
The Purpose Day celebrations were not just to kick-start a month’s worth of sustainable actions, but rather a month of empowering the Company’s people and partners to live a purposeful life towards bigger goal of making planet Earth greener for future generations.