As pioneers of sustainability, we know there’s always room for improvement. We are proud of our past successes. After all, they are the foundation of our future goals.
Since 2011, we have managed to operate in a climate-neutral manner. We achieved this at our location in Pratteln partly through prevention, but largely by significantly and consistently decreasing our CO2 emissions. Initially, we switched to hydroelectric power to generate electricity. Thanks to woodchip heating and waste heat recovery at our new production facility, indirect greenhouse gas emissions from district heating have disappeared. The new solar system powers the entire high-bay warehouse and logistics systems on sunny days. For this purpose, our facility in Pratteln is connected to the railway and river network. We are the sole Swiss chocolate supplier to offset the remaining emissions within our own value chain. Specifically, this means we plant trees directly on the land of our cacao farmers in Honduras.
HALBA sources many different types of raw goods from different parts of the world. We aim to make this process as sustainable as possible. This means we ensure direct and traceable delivery routes and fair prices for our producers under the most environmentally-friendly conditions possible. Today, three-quarters of our profits come from certified-sustainable products.
HALBA received the Swiss Ethics Award in 2018 for its FINCA project in Ecuador for outstanding ethical achievements. The project educates local farmers as coaches in sustainable agroforestry methods. The knowledge gained through the project is not only applied, but also directly passed on. In order to ensure that not only men profit from this training, a minimum participant quota of 25% women has been established. The FINCA project was honoured with the award for tackling a set of pervasive problems. It combats poverty, poor education, gender inequality and environmental damage.
In 2019, HALBA combined two things for the first time ever through its Sankofa pilot project: dynamic cacao agroforestry and CO2 offsetting in accordance with the accredited Gold Standard, the world’s strictest climate protection certification. This means that cacao farmers also plant fruit trees and high-grade timber trees alongside cacao plants on their agroforestry plots. These provide shade to the sensitive cacao plant and also store water while additionally helping the climate as a natural CO2 reservoir.