Green Forum • 30 April, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Nestlé Romania is aligning and adapting global initiatives at the local level, actively contributing to the achievement of the company's ambitious objectives. This commitment is reflected in investments across key areas such as education, diversity, youth inclusion and development, sustainability, biodiversity, and the circularity of packaging, said Irina Siminenco, Corporate Affairs Manager, Nestlé România, in an interview for Green Forum.
What specific green energy sources does Nestlé Romania currently rely on in its production facilities, and what percentage of total energy consumption do they represent?
At the end of 2024, at global level Nestlé registered 95.3% renewable electricity sourced in manufacturing sites and by the end of 2025 we aim to source 100% renewable electricity in all our manufacturing sites. This reduces our reliance on fossil fuels, protecting us against volatility in the cost of buying energy and helps deliver a significant reduction in Nestlé's Scope 2 emissions. We're also identifying and progressively rolling out solutions to cut our self-generated Scope 1 emissions, aiming to scale these projects between 2025 and 2030. At local level, Nestlé is running marketing and distribution operations in Romania, and the energy used comes from key market providers. Nestlé Romania operates with a constant and consistent pursuit of preventing useless energy consumption and we encourage our partners to use green energy sources.
What are Nestlé Romania's sustainability plans for 2025?
We are carrying on the same path, extending the projects that we have started many years ago, which are aligned with our global and regional strategy. We are constantly working in furthering the educational efforts of our social partners, PRAIS Foundation, running our sustainability programme in primary schools called “The Blue Planet Counts of You”. This school year we have 346 schools registered in the programme, from 33 counties and 202 urban and rural communities, with over 3,600 coordinators, teachers and principals involved. The kids are learning about how to take care of the environment, growing plants, water management at home, separate collection of waste and biodiversity.
In connection to our educational projects, a great project is the Nestlé Honey Forest, part of the company's commitment to the environment, which involved last year the planting of another 20,000 acacia trees on an area of four hectares in Chiselet, Călărași county, approximately 80 km southeast of Bucharest, taking to 110,000 the number of trees planted in Romania since 2020. The program will continue in 2025, and we plan to plant 10,000 acacia trees.
The issue of recycling flexible plastic, a topic launched in 2024, will be continued this year as Nestlé observed an increased interest of the population in the selective collection of polyethylene packaging or other types of flexible plastic used predominantly in the food industry, attention which is necessary in the context of the constant increase in recycling targets.
What are the main investment priorities for Nestlé Romania when it comes to green projects and ESG initiatives?
We are cascading and adapting all global initiatives, and we are supporting meeting the ambitious objectives. That means investing in education, diversity, youth inclusion and development, sustainability, biodiversity, circularity of our packaging.
In terms of packaging sustainability, what steps has Nestlé Romania taken to reduce single-use plastics or increase recyclability in line with EU environmental directives?
Nestlé Romania launched a campaign in May 2024 entitled "ReciCLARea e totul"/”Recycling is Everything”, together with Green Resources Management, the National Federation of Parents (FNAP) and the Sector 6 City Hall, aimed at explaining the collection symbols separation and recycling from packaging in the food industry and focus on flexible plastic. Nestlé launched this project because, at the national level, a sufficiently large amount of flexible plastic packaging is still not collected. There is a need for Romanians to become even more involved in the selective collection of flexible plastic packaging waste, thus supporting the achievement of the national recycling targets assumed at the level of the European Union.
How does the company align its ESG strategy with the group's global commitments, particularly in reducing carbon emissions and ensuring responsible sourcing in its Romanian supply chain?
Sustainability is embedded in everything that we do, from strategy development and implementation, setting individual and national KPIs related to our strategic plans, all the way to following through on our planned projects and programmes. Our suppliers need to respect a key set of standard business principles and to embed sustainable practices in the way they grow their crops. At global level we are already one year ahead of our commitments, registering at the end of 2024 20.38%reduction of our net GHG emissions versus our 2018 baseline (with a 20% target by the end of 2025) and 21.3% of our ingredients sourced from farmers adopting regenerative agricultural practices (with a 20% target for key ingredients by the end of 2025).