WELCOME STATEMENTS
George Chavel
CEO
Sodexo North America
ARLIN Wasserman
VP
Sustainability
Thank you for visiting with us today and for your interest in our sustainability activity.
The types of services we provide at Sodexo ̶ foodservice, facilities management and more ̶ offer some of the most important opportunities to make a difference in the health and environment of our communities. Recognizing this potential, we launched the "Better Tomorrow Plan" in October 2009 and committed to sharing our progress with you. This is our first performance-based sustainability report for North America. Here we provide baseline data for key aspects of sustainability performance, the necessary first step to tracking our progress.
The "Better Tomorrow Plan" is designed to leverage our scale by implementing key initiatives across our entire enterprise that includes some 10,000 sites we serve. As a result:
- Nearly half of our contracted seafood is now sustainably certified; and
- We almost doubled our percentage of fairly traded coffee purchases between 2009 and 2010.
In this report, we also highlight great stories of our progress at individual sites, such as:
- Earning green star ratings from the International Association of Conference Centers for reducing the use of energy, water, and waste;
- Making every single choice a healthy one at Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood, Ohio; and
- Sourcing 20 percent of our produce locally at Colby College in Maine.
Although we are off to a meaningful start, there is much more to be done. What's next for us?
- Driving increased outcomes from our supply chain. The products we source, whether food or equipment, are some of the most important parts of our environmental footprint. We are continuing to partner with our suppliers to drive sustainability practices throughout the supply chain. We include sustainability in our regular business reviews with them and last year launched our first "Better Tomorrow" awards for suppliers.
- Improving our measurement capability. Measuring impacts like energy and water usage from our operations at client sites is a challenge because we only operate a portion of these sites. We are working on developing better metrics that will improve our reporting precision.
- Deploying the Sustainability Management and Reporting Tool (SMART), our on-line resource that will help managers measure their performance, evaluate best practice adoption, and identify the most important next steps.
- Ramping up our energy management solutions toolkit. As part of our Quality of Daily Life portfolio, Sodexo is increasing its focus on energy management offers.
- Engaging in more substantive stakeholder dialogue. Partnering with Ceres, a leading non-profit organization committed to a sustainable business, we continue our outreach to a diverse set of stakeholders. This year we are focused on our strategy for local and sustainable foods, on health and wellness, and on our approaches to address climate change.
Thank you for joining us on our journey toward a better tomorrow. We know that the difference we make depends on all of us. We need you – customers, clients, employees, suppliers, sustainability advocates, and more – to help us deliver on the promise for a better tomorrow. After you digest this report, please take a moment to share your thoughts, ideas, questions, and concerns with us.
Sincerely,
George Chavel Arlin Wasserman
CEO, Sodexo North America VP, Sustainability
Sustainability continues to be a top-of-mind concern for our client partners and customers in Sodexo's Education segment. Our Better Tomorrow Plan is becoming more and more integrated into the solutions we provide at college campuses, K – 12 schools, and independent schools throughout North America. Our focus on sustainability is expected of us as a valued strategic partner. We're delivering the expertise, tools and resources daily to help our clients shine in this space. We are proud of our work in designing and implementing practices that help protect the environment, support local community development, and deliver healthy, sustainable menu options.
We have great stories to share like those of Colby College and school districts in Oregon and Rhode Island that you can read about in this report. But we know there is so much more work to do. This year, we continue working to make sustainability the standard by investing in resources that make implementation easier for our managers and by continuing our focus on fostering student well-being at all our K-12 accounts. I couldn't be more proud of the way Sodexo has partnered with First Lady Michelle Obama this year in her "Let's Move" initiative to help more of our sites shine when it comes to their commitment to a healthier generation. That's the kind of partnership we will need to truly create a Better Tomorrow.
In health care we are especially attuned to the idea that people's health is connected to the health of the planet. As a result, we look for comprehensive solutions that provide multiple benefits, such as Meatless Monday, which we rolled out to all of our hospital clients in January 2011. Increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables by leveraging the skills and passions of our chefs and dietitians to provide delicious healthy meals is part of meeting Sodexo's Better Tomorrow commitments. Health Care focuses on ways to promote health and wellness, provide and promote varied and balanced food options, reduce carbon emissions and water consumption and support local communities. On the facilities management front, our efforts to create healing environments include "xeriscaping," landscaping and gardening methods that reduce, and in some cases eliminate the need for supplemental watering; and growing flowers that our teams then put on patient trays to brighten their hospital stays. We are also using chemical-free cleaning systems that reduce water, noise, and drying time and allow us to turn over patient rooms more quickly.
Welcome to this year's sustainability report. Today's leading corporations in almost every marketplace need to think about sustainability and how it affects their business. It's become important to their customers, employees, and other stakeholders. This is important to all of our clients and we are proud to highlight our successful partnerships for sustainability with clients like Campbell's, San Ramon Valley Conference Center, and USAA. Next year we expect to continue to infuse our business with a sustainability ethic while increasing our ability to deliver foodservice, energy management, and other solutions for the nation's most committed corporations in the sustainability space.
Thank you for visiting our sustainability report. We are proud to report on our first baseline measurements of our sustainability performance. Government today has become a driving force behind sustainability. In October 2009, President Obama issued a new executive order mandating that 95% of all applicable government contracts meet sustainability requirements. With our commitment to a better tomorrow, we are positioned well to meet their needs. Our cafes at the United States Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior are great examples with local produce, on-site composting, featured organics, wellness programming and more. In the coming year we expect to expand the number of government sites that meet the new federal sustainability guidelines released by GSA. We are proud to partner with our nation's government in creating leading examples of sustainability that foster changes in the marketplace for a better tomorrow.