Ahold Delhaize, Mondelez CEOs on how business can adapt to a changing world

At the Consumer Goods Forum’s (CGF) Global Summit held in Kyoto, Japan, the business’ president Frans Muller and chairman Dirk Van De Put talked through the group’s strategic plans to help businesses around the world transition to more sustainable and ethical business models. The CGF is an organisation that brings together business leaders from around the world to collaborate and drive positive change – for business and the planet.Muller, who also acts as the CEO of Dutch multinational retail business Ahold Delhaize, which operates businesses such as Food Lion, Stop & Shop, and Fresh Direct, explained that the broader business sector can have an enormous effect on the transition to ‘net-zero’, but that it was imperative players across the sector collaborate to speed the process up.“We can create better lives when we collaborate together, and at the same time, have healthier, economical businesses for ourselves,” Muller said. “There are a number of things where we have challenges in our status quo, and we need to find those breakthrough solutions.”Taking care of workersMuller initially explained how important  it has become to take care of staff . Following the pandemic, many people are struggling with mental health and burnout, and there are ways for businesses to help , Muller said, such as encouraging diets and exercising within the workforce. Beyond that, the bigger challenge is ensuring that businesses’ supply chains no longer perpetuate  human rights violations. “We have to make sure that the people who work in our value chains are protected and are safe,” Muller said. “It sounds pretty intuitive, but we know we have work to do there. We cannot tolerate it.”Taking care of the planetThe second major principle Muller noted was a business’ ability to support the environment.“Climate is the most challenging and pressing item for all of us at the moment, and we have to make sure that we have clear arrangements amongst the membership of CGF [so that] we can help each other to share best practices,” Muller said. While businesses are already focusing on Scope 1 and 2 emissions (emissions from a brand’s own operations), it is Scope 3 emissions (those emitted from operations separate to the business, but still within its sphere of influence, i.e. manufacturers and suppliers), which are the most difficult to cut down.“Scope 3 is a hugely important topic,” Muller said. “I think we all struggle with this. It’s difficult. It’s big. It’s not easy to define that, so how do we find solutions?”Key to that will be a focus on becoming ‘forest positive’, rather than ‘carbon negative’, as retailers have focused on until now. There has been scrutiny on the effectiveness of buying carbon credits in recent months, as despite billions being spent by businesses to offset carbon through the schemes, forests around the world are still shrinking. Being ‘forest positive’ focuses on ending deforestation and, therefore, improving the planet’s ability to regulate emissions. Staying ahead of the gameAccording to Van De Put (who also serves as Mondelēz International’s CEO), the key is to open up the lines of communication between manufacturers, service providers and retailers, and to support a collaborative process where each party works together toward the goal of cutting down on the dangerous aspects of ‘business as usual’. “This is not about an individual company’s success – this is about industry success,” Van De Put said. “We would all like to make sure that we are clear [with] our governments so that we aren’t confronted with regulation to organise these kinds of things, we’d like to be ahead of the game where possible.”