Consumers Can Buy Chocolate With Their Eyes Wide Open This Easter

NZ Whittaker's Chocolate awarded the 'Good Egg'

Be Slavery Free (Australia and the Netherlands), Green America, INKOTA, Mighty Earth, and National Wildlife Federation published their 2021 joint Easter Scorecard, analyzing how the world’s biggest cocoa traders, chocolate manufacturers, and retailers are addressing social and environmental benchmarks. These six NGOs bring expertise and experience across the sections in the Scorecard and combined together bring deep understandings to the social and environmental areas in the cocoa production of the chocolate industry and what the emerging bench-marks look like.

The “Golden Egg” was awarded to three highest-ranking companies: 
Alter Eco, a US-based company with distribution in the US and Europe, received its first Golden Egg. The NGOs also acknowledged its partner Chocolats Halba / Sunray for Halba’s role in helping Alter Eco achieve sustainability goals.

• Tony’s Chocolonely, a Netherlands-based multinational company, received the Golden Egg for the second time in a row.
• Whittaker’s, from New Zealand with products available primarily in Australia and New Zealand, also received the Golden Egg for the second year in a row

In receiving the award, James Ardern, Whittaker’s CEO, says

"Whittaker’s is honoured to receive this award for the second consecutive year, and we hope it gives Whittaker’s Chocolate Lovers even more reasons to treat themselves with Whittaker’s Chocolate this Easter.

“We’re really pleased with the progress we’re making on our Good Honest Chocolate journey, which over the past year has included investments in a number of other initiatives beyond the commitment we made last year to 100% Rainforest Alliance Certified™ Ghanaian cocoa, despite the challenges created by Covid-19. We’re especially proud of the two school washroom facilities we invested in at the two Rainforest Alliance certified cocoa cooperatives we source from in Ghana, which are a credit to the local community who worked hard to complete the buildings at such a challenging time globally.

“We’re committed to ongoing work to help improve conditions further for our cocoa farmers and their communities. This all part of our Good Honest Chocolate journey, which reflects Whittaker’s commitment to quality in all its dimensions.”

“Consumers kept asking us what chocolates they should buy, if they want to make a difference in slavery and child labour in West Africa?” said Fuzz Kitto CoDirector of Be Slavery Free Coalition which is the Australian coproducer of the Chocolate Scorecard. “

Now we can say, we worked with chocolate companies and retailers and gathered mainly publicly available information and assessed chocolate companies and retailers on how they were doing in the social and environmental areas.”

“With this scorecard, consumers in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Europe, UK, Japan and beyond can buy Easter chocolates from the heart and can know which chocolates could be tainted by deforestation and human rights abuses,” said National Wildlife Federation Senior Advisor Etelle Higonnet. “

Consumers can now buy chocolate with their eyes wide open, and use their purchasing power to reward industry leaders like Whittaker’s, Alter Eco and Tony’s Chocolonely (not yet easily available in Australia / New Zealand).”

The group of NGOs surveyed 30 chocolate companies and cocoa suppliers, estimated to be supplying over 80% of the world’s chocolate confectionery. The companies were scored on the six most pressing sustainability issues facing the chocolate industry:

1. Human rights due diligence.
2. Transparency and traceability.
3. Deforestation and climate change.
4. Agroforestry.
5. Living income policies.
6. Child labor.

Each company was allotted coded coloured eggs for each category and then an overall coloured bunny,

“We have seen the most positive progress in the traceability category over recent years,” said Charlotte Tate, Labour Campaigns Director at Green America. 

Companies must have fully traceable supply chains, paired with transparent reporting.”

Besides the traceability trend, the scorecard provides a snapshot on how companies address farmer income.

“A staggering 180 million wrapped or boxed Easter eggs are purchased every year. Poverty is the key reason for slavery and child labour and not enough of the chocolate industry’s money goes to cocoa farmers themselves,” said Fuzz Kitto, National CoDirector of Be Slavery Free in Australia.

“Most cocoa farmers earn under $1 per day, with women cocoa farmers making as little as $0.30 daily and they continue to be especially hard hit by economic disruption in this pandemic.”

“This scorecard sets the record straight on greenwashing versus real action,” said Johannes Schorling, Campaign Coordinator at INKOTA.

“Despite decades of voluntary industry commitments, poverty, hazardous child labour, and deforestation are still widespread in the cocoa sector. Most companies have only started to carry out due diligence, and many gaps remain. This corporate underperformance - which we track in the scorecard - shows that we need robust due diligence legislation, because voluntary approaches have clearly failed.”

© Scoop Media