Hershey’s deforestation policy cracks down on cocoa suppliers

The No Deforestation programme was announced in line with the chocolate giant’s targets to reduce its global emissions in line with the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.

Deforestation and forest degradation are key contributors to climate change and global warming. Hershey’s commitment to end deforestation applies to all suppliers across its raw material supply chains. However, the company will prioritize the independent verification of policy compliance for the commodities in its supply chain that present the greatest risk of contributing to deforestation: cocoa, palm oil, pulp paper for packaging and soy.

As part of its work to prevent deforestation, Hershey uses GPS devices to collect information about farm boundaries and create polygon maps of the farms from which it sources cocoa. These maps are combined with satellite images to identify places where forests and other sensitive ecosystems may have been degraded or where intact forests remain in proximity to cocoa farms.