The Hershey Company announced it will join the Advisory Council of the newly founded Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) as part of Hershey’s commitment to reporting on its expanding sustainability practices. As a member of the Advisory Council, Hershey will help develop reporting standards for the food and beverage industry that will support greater transparency.
The SASB, a newly formed nonprofit organization, aims to develop and disseminate sustainability accounting standards for 89 industries, which will give investors, companies and key stakeholders a comprehensive view of a company’s sustainability risks and opportunities.
“We are committed to being transparent with our stakeholders on a growing range of socially responsible and environmentally sustainable programs and initiatives at The Hershey Company,” says Todd Camp, Director, Corporate Social Responsibility at The Hershey Company. “We support SASB’s mission to create industry-specific standards that will increase transparency and ease of comparison across the food and beverage industry. We look forward to collaborating with our peers to help drive enhanced innovation and sustainability across our industry.”
Hershey understands that there are many non-financial material issues affecting a company’s ability to create long-term value. These sustainability issues vary greatly from industry to industry, and SASB, in partnership with industry leaders such as Hershey, will work to identify and understand these unique material issues so they can develop a standard for companies to measure, manage and disclose how they are mitigating sustainability risks.
Hershey is already committed to providing timely and relevant sustainability information to its key stakeholders through its CSR reports and scorecard updates; full CSR reports are released every even year with scorecard updates, providing progress against the company’s key sustainability benchmarks, published every odd year. Hershey also engages with stakeholders year round through ongoing announcements of new Corporate Social Responsibility projects and initiatives.
Most recently and significantly, Hershey announced its 2020 cocoa certification goals, a substantial commitment to addressing cocoa sustainability issues in the cocoa supply chain. Hershey will source 100 percent certified cocoa for its chocolate product lines globally by 2020 and accelerate its sustainability programs in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
