Slow Living Summit: Ben and Jerry’s – Reducing our Carbon Footprint

Welcome everyone to our second panel for the day. My name is Lissa Harris. I'm the executive director of Strolling of the Heifers, and this is our first ever virtual, completely virtual Slow Living Summit. We're going to give a few seconds for folks to join us before we begin. Numbers are still going up. We do want to thank our sponsors of the Slow Living Summit, Breakthrough Beverage and Meadows Beef Farm. They are responsible for helping us put all of this together. Yeah, they were very flexible and a very different sort of summit, and hopefully we'll do a good enough job that, you know, we can keep... Okay, so I think we can get started. Again, I'm Melissa Harris, the executive director of Strolling of the Heifers. This is the third day of our virtual Slow Living Summit, and I'm gonna pass it over to our summit coordinator Jen Brown. Thank you so much, Alisa. Thank you for everything you do and for being such a great teammate. Peter, even though you can't see or hear him, has also been instrumental and is, you know, a lot of the amazing behind-the-scenes work. And thanks everyone for joining. We are super excited. This has gone better than we could have imagined, and we're just excited that we can offer this to folks in many different places and, you know, increase the accessibility in a lot of different ways. Rob and Ben & Jerry's in general has been a huge supporter of the Slow Living Summit and Strolling of the Heifers for many years. Rob just keeps coming back, so it's wonderful, and we really appreciate that. So I'm gonna go ahead and have him just kind of lead the way. I think Ben & Jerry's doesn't need too much introduction, but for those who don't know, it's the most delicious ice cream available on the free market. So I will go ahead and let Rob take it away, and we will take off our screens right now as well. Okay, well, thank you, John and Lissa and Peter. It's really great. You know, it's too bad that we're not all in Brattleboro together because that's always a wonderful time to actually be in the same space, but thankfully we're able to, with this technology, be able to be together during this Slow Living Summit this way. So happy to be with you. And just for those of you who I don't know or we've never met, my name is Rob Mahalik. I'm the Social Mission Special Projects Director. I like to just call myself the Swiss Army knife of social mission at Ben & Jerry's. I've been around a long time at Ben & Jerry's, many decades, and I do a lot of different special things. I do want to call out and give some credit for this presentation to really the lead author of the presentation, which is our global sustainability manager Jenna Evans. And, you know, it's good to have good leading roles in terms of the different stakeholders, and I wanted to make sure that Jenna Evans got a little credit for all of the work that's been done here. Although this is quite a team effort at Ben & Jerry's, most of the presentation will be on our Carbon Reduction program. I do want to start as I always like to start for those of you who know Ben & Jerry's, you may be very well familiar with our three-part mission statement. It was one of the first to actually codify or memorialize a social purpose within a mission statement. We started in 1978 in a small scoop shop on a street corner across from City Hall in Burlington, Vermont. But by 1988, on our 10th year anniversary, we were traded on NASDAQ. So there were shareholders, a board of directors, the shareholders meeting, and at that 1988 shareholders meeting, we actually published this three-part mission statement with an economic and social mission. And of course, it was one of the first that actually put a social purpose. I always bring this up because this is not something that's just in a frame on a wall at Ben & Jerry's. This is still our North Star. It guides us in trying to put social purpose alongside economic and product purpose to actually create a model, a business model of linked prosperity in it. And it all ties into all of what we're thinking about in terms of the climate and climate justice but also economic justice and social justice here in the, you know, some of the overlaps. And to the right on the screen, what you see is a progressive value statement that we wrote in 1997. It was one of the first statements, and it's actually prescient in what it foresaw. It talks about social and economic justice and a new way that capitalism doesn't really create opportunities equally. And so we wanted our business to be a model of seeking out ways to support those on the economic margins and, you know, create new models of economic justice but also to keep in mind the environmental connections that we have. And so just to summarize our core values, our business continues to stand for human rights and dignity throughout our business, social and economic justice, and environmental protection, restoration, and regeneration because we know that, you know, you could do one part of that, but if we're not regenerating the environment, then we may lose the healthy soil that we need to grow food, and, you know, we'll be in a lot of trouble. So that's just kind of a framework and a background about Ben & Jerry's for those of you who may not be so familiar with us. We use these core values and mission statements to really, again, guide our decisions and what we're trying to do in our business, and hopefully we can create a model that's both successful and creates the outcomes that we're looking for. So let's turn our attention to greenhouse gas, carbon footprint, all of that. I'm sure for most of you joining us today, you're very familiar with scopes one, two, and three as it relates to greenhouse gases, but just in case, essentially scope one is your responsibility for your direct emissions. You know, it's called your brick-and-mortar, your company factories, and that kind of stuff. Your scope two are the indirect emissions such as, you know, the greenhouse gas that's produced when getting electricity, so the electricity that comes to your operations. And then there's scope three, which essentially is everything else. So for a business like Ben & Jerry's, it's essentially our value stream, you know, downstream and upstream. So really, that's the biggest part of our greenhouse gas footprint, and so that's where we really want to be paying attention. Over the years, what we've realized is our work is getting much more complicated and sophisticated. Way back when, for those of you who do have a little bit of history at the company, you may remember Rainforest Crunch, which was a flavor that we came up with. The concept there was that if you could purchase Brazil nuts from the rainforests and make the rainforests economically more appealing and viable with standing trees and fruits and nuts than cutting the trees down for other forms of agriculture, you know, that was the competition. That was an economic solution to hopefully create better environmental outcomes in the end. And that was, you know, a novel idea, and, you know, many, many caught on to that. But over the years, what we realize is that there are a lot of things we need to do as a society, and a lot of the experts have said, you know, we need to be doing things like putting a carbon fee on our carbon and getting good policy. So for us, in this timeline, what you see is that we started to take a look at those factors: what could we do in terms of a carbon fee, and, you know, where are the policies that we want to support as a company and, you know, be out there and really campaigning, such as the Paris Agreement way back when in 2015, and then looking at things such as science-based targets, which we'll get into in just a second. So over the years, we've been layering on the different aspects of how we can actually reduce our carbon footprint. Now, this is just another view of this over time. What I'd like to kind of do is just draw your attention. I tried to highlight there's some warm and fuzzy blu...

for folks to join us before we begin numbers are still going up we do want to thank our sponsors of the slow living summit breakthrough beverage and meadows beef farm they are responsible for helping us put all of this together yeah

they were very flexible and a very different sort of summit and hopefully we'll do a good enough job that you know we can keep okay so I think we can get started again I'm Melissa Harris and the executive

director of strolling of the heifers this is the third day of our virtual slow living summit and I'm gonna pass it over to our summit coordinator Jen Brown thank you so much Alisa thank you for everything you do and for

being such a great teammate Peter didn't even though you can't see or hear him it's also been instrumental and is you know it's a lot of the amazing behind-the-scenes work and thanks everyone for joining we are super excited this has gone better than we

could have imagined and we're just excited that we can offer this to folks in many different places and in you know increase the accessibility in a lot of different ways Rob and Ben and Jerry's in general has been a huge supporter of

the slow Lavigne summit and story that the heparin for many years Rob just keeps coming back so it's wonderful and you really appreciate that so I'm gonna go ahead and have him just kind of lead the way I

think ben & jerry's doesn't need too much introduction but for those who don't know it's the most delicious ice cream available on the free market so i will go ahead and let rob take it away and we will take off our screens right

now as well okay well thank you John and Lissa and Peter it's really great I'm you know it's too bad that we're not all in Brattleboro together because that's always a wonderful time to actually be in the same space but thankfully we're

able to with this technology be able to be together during this low limit living summit this way so happen to be with you and just for those of you who I don't know or we've never met my name is Rob mahalik I'm the

social mission special projects director I like to just call myself the Swiss Army knife of social mission at Ben & Jerry's I've been around a long time at Ben & Jerry's many decades and I do a lot of different special things I do

want to call out and give some credit for this presentation to really the lead author of the presentation which is our global sustainability manager Jenna Evans and you know it's good to have good leading roles in terms of the different

stakeholders and I wanted to make sure that Jenna Evans got a little credit for all of the work that's been done here in although this is quite a team effort at Ben & Jerry's most of the presentation will be on our Carbon Reduction program

I do want to start as I always like to start for those of you who know Ben and Jerry's you you may be very well familiar with our three-part mission statement it was one of the first to actually codify or memorialize a social

purpose within within a mission statement we started in 1978 in a small scoop shop on a street corner across from City Hall in Burlington Vermont but by 1988 on our 10th year anniversary we were traded on NASDAQ so there was there

were shareholders a board of directors the shareholders meeting and at that 1988 shareholders meeting we actually published this three-part mission statement with a economic and social mission and of course it was one of the first that actually put a social purpose I always

bring this up because this is not something that's just uh in a frame on a wallet and injuries this is still our North Star it guides us in trying to put social purpose alongside economic and product purpose to actually create a

model a business model of linked prosperity in it and it all ties into all of what we're thinking about in terms of the climate and climate justice but also economic justice and social justice here in there you know some of

the overlaps and to the right on the screen what you see is a progressive value statement that we wrote in 1997 it was one of the first statements and it's it's actually prescient in what it foresaw it talks about social and

economic justice and a new way that capitalism doesn't really create opportunities equally and so we wanted our business to be a model of seeking out ways to support those on the economic margins and you know create new models of economic justice but also to

keep in mind the environmental connections that we have and so just to summarize our core values our business continues to stand for human rights and dignity throughout our business social and economic justice and environmental protection restoration and regeneration

because we know that you know you could you could do one part of that but if we're not regenerating the environment then we may lose the healthy soil that we need to grow food and you know we'll be in a lot of trouble so that's just

kind of a framework in a background about Ben and Jerry's for those of you who may not be so familiar with us we use these core values mission statements to really again guide our decisions and what we're trying to do in our business

and and hopefully we can create a model that's both successful and creates the outcomes that we're looking for so let's turn our attention to greenhouse gas carbon footprint all of that I'm sure for most of you joining us

today you're very familiar with scopes one two and three and as it relates to greenhouse gases but just in case essentially scope one is your your responsibility for your direct emissions you know it's called your brick-and-mortar your your company

factories and that kind of stuff your scope two are the indirect emissions such as you know the greenhouse gas that's produced when getting electricity so the electricity that comes to your operations and then there's scope three which essentially is everything else so

for a business like Ben & Jerry's it's a Sun it's essentially our value stream you know downstream and upstream so really that's the biggest part of our greenhouse gas footprint and so that's where we really want to be paying

attention over the years what we've realized is our work is getting much more complicated and sophisticated way back when for those of you who do have a little bit of history at the company you may remember rainforests crunch which

was a flavor that we came up with that the the concept there was that if you could purchase Brazil nuts from the rainforests and make the rainforests economically more appealing and viable with standing trees and fruits and nuts

than cutting the trees down for other forms of Agriculture you know that was the competition that was in him it was an economic solution to hopefully create better environmental outcomes in the end and that was a you know as a novel idea

and you know many many caught on to that but over the year is what we realize is that we there there are a lot of things we need to do as a society and a lot of the experts have said you know we need

to be doing things like putting a carbon fee on our carbon and getting good policy so for us in this timeline what you see is that we started to take a look at those factors what could we do

in terms of a carbon fee and you know where are the policies that we want to support as a company and you know be out there and really campaigning such as the Paris agreements way back when in 2015 and then looking at things such as

science-based targets which we'll get into in just a second so over the years we've been layering on the different aspects of how we can actually reduce our carbon footprint now this is just another view of this over time what I'd

like to kind of do is just draw your attention I tried to highlight there's some warm and fuzzy blue around a couple of those items down below the timeline one is in 2015 we actually put a price on our carbon it was the same year that

we completed a life cycle analysis so that we knew where that carbon is and we'll get into that detail that was a key thing because a lot of companies or a lot of organizations actually haven't done that and we need to do that and I

think a lot of us on this call understand why we need to do that because we can create a lot of benefits that have you know maybe private profits but then social consequences and we haven't really priced in the social

consequence of carbon and you know how that affects our climate then in 2016 we actually introduced a non-dairy product which is really important because a non-dairy product has a much lower carbon footprint and it's a way that we

could grow the company we still have our dairy products and quite honestly the the dairy ice cream is still growing but to grow the company into the future without growing our carbon footprint we need to look at ways we can do that and

so that's a significant decision over our timeline and then way over to the right we did finally get science-based targets approved we submitted them to the science-based targets initiative we'll get into that but we think that that's an important step that

organizations and companies need to take so that we really have some structure and discipline to the targets that were claiming that we're going to reduce we also want to call out some of our thought and research partners in this work you know we we

know how to make ice cream but we really need some of the thought leaders and the scientists and the people that are doing the the experiments and the research to help us understand where within our business we can make some strides and so

we've been working with green America the University of Vermont's we're doing some major research with them again the science-based targets we've also been working with native energy which is a Vermont based company in native energy has been helping us to implement some of

the programs that we'll talk about in just a second and pure strategies which is based out of Massachusetts which has helped a lot of companies look at their sustainability plans and help them to reduce their greenhouse guests so part

of what I want to get across there is you know there's a lot of complexity to this and it's going to take a lot of partnerships in collaboration to actually create the solutions that we need moving forward so let's take a look

at the carbon footprint for Ben and Jerry's again a lot of a lot of stuff on this slide but let me just draw your attention over to the pie chart and what we found out was that as you might

suspect dairy is over half of our carbon footprint and then when we look at the other agricultural ingredients we've got another 21% so essentially about 75% of our carbon footprint a pint of Ben and Jerry's is agriculture a lot of people

would suspect hey what about manufacturing or transportation well there they are a factor and when you look at inbound and outbound transportation that's that's got a nice 9% chunk there but really it comes down to agriculture and just kind of conceive

of how much carbon there is and a pint of Ben and Jerry's you can see on the screen there's three point three the equivalent of three point three pounds of carbon per pint so that would be one point six kilograms or three point three

pounds and that's 460 metric ton 460 thousand metric tons of carbon in Ben and Jerry's footprint just kind of conceive of oh wow that's that does sound like a lot it is it's it's a lot so just just what is the

equivalent of four hundred and sixty thousand metric tons of carbon well that would be about 50 almost 52 million gallons of gasoline consumed you can kind of scan the numbers on this but it's a lot I think one of my favorite

numbers in terms of equivalent it would be like driving your average passenger car one trillion miles to get up to 460 thousand metric tons so yeah it's a big number and we really have to lean in and figure out how we can reduce that over

time so like I said it's about 3.3 pounds of carbon per pint and that's the the unit that we will use as a measurement unit or 1.6 pounds of carbon for our non-dairy so you can see it's about you know half so that's that's a

good thing and just kind of in the scope of food like where does that land in the scale of food all the way over to the left of this chart the big bar that's a lamb that's if you were to raise and

harvest lamb and beef so you can see the the animal products the meat products are a big offender of climate change our our pint kind of Nestle's in there between eggs and potatoes and then our non-dairy is between milk and tomatoes

which kind of makes a nice sort of tempo in rhyme but you can see where it lands at least our products land on the the food spectrum of greenhouse gas production so since dairy is such a big deal for us

that's that's where we need to lean in and like I mentioned early on in this session we have put a fee on our carbon so we put like $10 per metric ton on our carbon and we use that as an internal

fee and that money goes directly to reduce our carbon footprint and we're not really talking about carbon offsets or things such as that we're talking about actually looking into you know dairy and other agricultural supply chains and trying to figure out

where can we reduce that carbon so what we're looking at here is if we take that pie chart that we looked at earlier that breaks out where the carbon is now we bring the big circle that's just dairy

we're looking at Dairy and 47% of the issue is enteric emissions and that's basically the cows digestive emissions mostly it comes with burps many people like to have a little bit of rye Baldry about the other end of the cow but

really most of the percentage is from the front end of the cow and burping and so we know okay we got to look at that and that means we got to look at nutrition and there is some great

research being developed on how we can actually reduce enteric emissions through the nutrition and the feed we've got manure as the second highest percentage and really managing manure is a key aspect of this and then it goes all the way through the feed manure

management fertilizer you know the inputs and stuff what we can reduce that and then a variety of other things so so what we've done is you know we've mapped out okay where's the carbon in our supply chain and let's go after that

carbon and let's use our carbon fee the money that we're saving internally and let's put it against some some carbon initiatives a little note about science-based targets I don't know if you're familiar with this but this is a group has put

together a standard by which organizations and companies can submit a plan for how they're going to reduce their their carbon over time and that plan can be either approved or it can be rejected with certain corrective actions to to modify the plan so that it can be

approved but what's important about this is it's it's science-based and so you know it's not sort of whimsical public-relations puffery are at all--it's it's really kind of setting some real targets that will you know if will help to limit the global warming to

below two degrees Celsius by 2050 and you know help to cut those emissions and so we submitted a plan we it took a little time but we did get it approved and basically what we're looking at here's these are the the major what

you're looking at here is that this the big red rectangles that are going around the big blue rectangles are basically the scope of our science-based targets it's around 75 to 80 percent of our full footprint there are some parts of it

outside of our control such as transportation once the product gets outside of our control and transportation it's another area where we can influence but it's it's it's more difficult for us to have the kind of reduction targets that we would hope for

but basically working with the dairy farms that we work with we can create the kind of interventions that we're looking for and some of the other ingredients such as sugar and cocoa vanilla coffee we're working with those supply chains to to create greenhouse

gas reductions and climate mitigation then we get into product packaging we're working on that we're working on reducing the petroleum-based laminates you know we're a frozen product we're a wet product so we have to laminate our packaging and what we're doing is

looking for solutions that would exclude any kind of petroleum-based laminates and see if we can get into you know bio-based laminates and reduce our carbon footprint there and then there's a square over a 5% franchise we have franchise scoop shops and so we're

working with our franchise scoop shop Network to have programs that will help to reduce the carbon footprint of that of that network so our overall goals are to reach a hundred percent renewable energy for our operations which is scope

one and two by 2025 now there is a little asterisk there we are Ben and Jerry's is still a Vermont company we're still run out of Vermont we we manage the entire global operation out of Vermont but yes we are part of Unilever

Unilever in its own right is quite a progressive multinational multi brand business it has a lot of very ambitious goals in terms of the its own carbon footprint and sustainability but for the most part we're very independent within

that portfolio and so while we have the asterisk is that we're going to be renewable by 2025 and then the rest of Unilever is goal is to be on for something renewable by 2030 and of course that's that's a game-changer

because that the scale of Unilever is is much greater than them Ben and Jerry's of course we want to reduce our intensity by 40 percent by 2025 now I want to just focus a little bit on that word intensity and again I'm assuming a

lot of people on this call will will understand the distinction of intensity versus absolute but what we're trying to do is that 3.3 pounds of carbon that's in a pint of Ben and Jerry's we're trying to reduce that by 40 percent by

2025 and then 80 percent by 2050 but stay with me on this even though we're reducing the intensity per pint by the year 2050 hopefully if all things work out we're gonna be making a lot more pints you know we're gonna be producing

a lot more many many many more pints so our absolute footprint will still have a tendency to increase over time but we will reach the we will reach a certain moment when that'll Plateau and then start to come down

that's that's what our game plan is so we're very honest and transparent about the fact that we're working on an intensity reduction not an absolute reduction but you have to you have to decrease your intensity before you can

get to the absolute reduction and we have a certain kind of faith that in the interventions that were we're starting now and the different research we're doing in agriculture and the technologies that are being developed in agriculture for things like bio

digesters and you know manure separators and all of the kinds of things that we can get into our agricultural footprint we're hoping that over time there's going to be a lot more innovation in that and we'll be able to actually make

a real dent in our absolute footprint but by achieving 80% intensity reduction by 2050 we actually will be doing we'll be doing a good job in the absolute footprint as well all right so how are we gonna get there

how are we going to take that pint of energized from 3.3 down 2.6 pounds of carbon by 2050 and by the way when you go to the market in 2050 the pint won't be a real teeny-weeny pint like that

it'll still be the same size it just won't have as much carbon in it so the strategy is as we've been discussing earlier dairy is 53 percent of our footprints so we need to really lean in on dairy and then that that other 21

percent of our agricultural footprint on the ingredients outside of it the sugar and the cocoa etc but we can also look at our portfolio mix as I mentioned earlier we do now have non-dairy products and that's helping to grow the

company but it's not growing the carbon footprint at the same rate and then we still need to look at our scope one and two emissions in terms of our manufacturing plants and our operations even though it's a small percentage of

our footprint it's still important to dive into that so dairy again we're working with so a hundred percent of our ice cream in the u.s. is is made in Vermont and for the most part we've been dealing with Vermont farmers over the

years there are a few that are in northeastern New York State as well but essentially it's it's this you know milk shed that we're working in we've been working with the st. Albans Cooperative Creamery over the years since well

formally since 1985 when we we built our first real manufacturing plant the st. Albans cooperative Creamery is now part of Dairy Farmers of America or DFA if you will but we're still we still have the same direct relationship and

engagement so we have a program that we call caring dairy it's kind of a warm and fuzzy name and you know that's for the nice external communications but in caring dairy we have a lot of very high standards for animal care the care of

the people within that supply chain the workers and the farmers and then the care for the earth the soil and the soil health you know really comes down to soil if we don't have the good healthy soil which by the way we're losing we're

gonna need to you know we're gonna need we need to lean in in that area I don't know if it's been noted in any previous presentations but there was a report of the United Nations not long ago that

said if we keep going the way we're going we'll only have 60 harvests left of healthy soil that's not very many when you think of you know time is a wink of an eye and so it doesn't need to

go that way if we have more and more agricultural companies kind of wake up to that fact and acknowledge that fact and lean in there are ways to keep our soil healthy and keep our environment so we're looking at a variety of

interventions as I was mentioning before bio digesters you know in terms of manure manure management manure separators we're looking at things such as cover crops and crop rotations and no-till or low till cropping practices in all of these

what all these do is they help to not have a farm be a carbon emitter but eventually as you increase these practices what we're trying to get to is actually have carbon in setting on the farm and this is this is achievable it's

not you know I think animal agriculture has been highly criticized over time you know and there's there's there's good reason for that but if if done well agriculture can be a solution it doesn't have to be a problem and so right now

we're working with again native energy and pure strategies and the the participating farms that are in the program I should mention we have about each year we enroll the number of farms that produce the volume of dairy that Ben and

Jerry's needs to make ice cream in Vermont so depending on if the farm size is larger or smaller the number of farms and the program each year will go up and down in years past we've had as many as

80 80 Vermont farms that's eight zero but in recent years it's been a little bit lower you know there has been some farm consolidation in Vermont and so some of the farms are getting bigger and right now last year we had about 70 some

farms and I think this year were down to 60 some farms in the program but those farms represent the volume of dairy that Ben and Jerry's needs to make ice cream and so that's how we how we run that

program so the next area is ingredients we as I mentioned earlier you know we we work in global supply chains we work with Fairtrade international and Fairtrade certified sugar cocoa banana vanilla coffee and almonds as as part of

that supply chain and within those supply chains we've been working with cooperatives directly and producers directly as well as we work with a sustainable Food Lab which is another wonderful vermont-based company but that works in global supply chains and we're

looking at interventions that can help again mitigate the climate effects and actually over time get to climb get to carbon in setting that's what we ultimately want to do and so we've been working with Fairtrade international sustainable food lab and then the

different producer organizations for cocoa we work with four cooperatives in Cote d'Ivoire or the Ivory Coast we work with vanilla producers in both Uganda and Madagascar we get coffee from Mexico and we get sugar from Belize banana from

Ecuador we also get sugar from owls El Salvador so what we do in these we don't have an arm's length distance we actually engage directly again in programs that we're funding to help mitigate the climate footprint in those

supply chains on the portfolio of products you know basically it's you know how can we increase the business and not to be too redundant but how can we have more products that can reduce the carbon footprint and so far the

non-dairy products have been a part of that the first non dairy products we came out with started with primarily an almond based foundation of the recipe we are now looking into sunflower based products we do have some products now in

the marketplace they seem to be doing well and being received well and so you know working working to grow the company outside of dairy and again if they're any dairy farmers on this I know this is this is the slow lemmings slow living

summit and you know strolling of the heifers our dairy business is growing too so we actually haven't had any fall back in that so we I think we think we can gonna grow grow the business in both ways and then again with the

interventions that we have in dairy we can hopefully come out with the outcomes that we're looking for by 2050 and there may be ways within the recipe itself you know are the ways to have a good recipe you know this is always kind

of a little bit of a dangerous area to get into because we really protect our recipes one of the things by the way some of you may know this some of you may not you know why is Ben and Jerry's more

expensive than other products and a lot of it has to do with the fact that there is more ice cream per square inch in a pint of Ben and Jerry's than there might be in a half a gallon of another product

that's lower price and the reason for that is basically companies can just pump air into those products you know it's just like whipped cream you know when you when you're whipping your cream you're just really whipping a bunch of

air into it it makes it nice and light and fluffy and everything and that's kind of the same thing with ice cream or any of any one of those frozen products the more air you put into it the lighter

it becomes in less dense now our our products have probably the least amount of air and the most amount of stuff per square inch and that's kind of why they're so dense and a little bit you know pricier than the other stuff but my

point in this is is that when we start getting into the non-dairy products we've been we've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen a lot of time with our chefs and food scientists to make that product worth you know being in a

Ben & Jerry's pine and and you know cuz the proof of the pudding is in the eating and if you don't like it you're not going to come back and get any more and that's that's not good for the

business so thankfully we've got a great group in the kitchen and they've been coming up with some good recipes but that's that's part of it is with the recipes can we continue to actually reduce our carbon footprint and then the

last piece of this is in our scope 1 & 2 emissions in our manufacturing sites you know we we one of the things as you know being based out of Vermont and I don't know how many of you on this call are

you know based in Vermont and how many of you are outside of Vermont Vermont has a pretty green if you will or a low greenhouse gas a utility footprint but we're still looking at you know how can we

increase that within our manufacturing sites in terms of you know alternative energy renewables and and things such as that so we still have we still have some work to do there so this actually takes me through I you know this took me a

little less time than I thought but I think we can open this wide open to questions or challenges or curiosities that is our primary work that we're doing in terms of reducing our carbon footprint and we've kind of covered the

whole the whole footprint so let's see if we can open it up maybe to any of the questions that may have come in already or if not this is a great time to start getting your questions and Jen how can

people get their questions there so they can there's a Q&A box and people can type that directly in there and you do have a question so far I'd be also there was a question on a Facebook group that

I don't know if this person is actually on the call but I'm happy to ask it and it's it's something that you know you kind of I'm sure that you've heard many many times how do you reconcile being a

larger corporation Unilever with your mission how does I know that there's about actually I worked at the Middlebury when I buy it was happening a lot a lot of ice cream that year so how do you you know I know that there

are certain things that you said had to sort of happen for that to go just well just a little bit of history on the Unilever acquisition of Ben and Jerry's which took place in the year 2000 there was quite a lot of genius that was part

of Ben and Jerry's leadership on the board of directors and of course our co-founders Ben and Jerry and they worked out an acquisition agreement with Unilever which was really it was unparalleled and quite honestly the acquisition agreement itself although it

wasn't a direct forerunner of the benefit corporation movement or the B Corp movement where you know social purpose is part of the attributes of the business model the acquisition agreement set up a way for Ben and Jerry's to to maintain

its both its independence and its social mission what it did was it set up a an independent board of directors of Ben and Jerry's that had power and authority over the social mission like legal power and authority over the social mission so

that the social mission wouldn't go away over time and there you know they have done a great job working with both Ben and Jerry's you know management and leadership as well as Unilever management and leadership to maintain the social mission over time so that's

one way we've been able to maintain that but I do have to say Unilever is one of the more monotonous a one of the more it is the most progressive multinational company that I'm aware of and it's it

under the leadership of Paul Pullman who is who has no since moved on but Paul Polman set up a Unilever sustainable living plan that had very ambitious goals in terms of reducing you know energy waste carbon throw out all of the

different businesses within Unilever portfolio and really set key performance indicators and targets each year that the companies were held to so of all the multinationals in the world it really was a wonderful marriage and there's been great internal exchange you know

Unilever has sent Paul Polman as CEO you know the CEO of Unilever ends up going to places like Davos Switzerland and speaking on global stages he came to Vermont and you know wanted to directly understand the Ben and Jerry's model and

not only did he come to Brobot once but he came to Vermont twice and then he came to Vermont three times and then he sent his entire executive suite to Vermont and you know we we shared our model and our our value system and the

way we make decisions and we think to some to some degree that's influenced the way Unilever does things but also Unilever has some great efficiencies and you know their own people within supply chains and scientists and researchers that can can

help Ben & Jerry's also reduce its carbon footprint I'll give you one example and I don't mean to run on here way back when through Unilever we were very aware of freezers that had a much lower carbon footprint and so when when

Ben and Jerry's looks at its entire value chain we look at it from seed to the final delivery of the product and so there were some freezers that used a inert gas system that was like was very climate safe and they were being built

in Europe but they were not legal in the US so Unilever worked with Ben and Jerry's to actually bring those freezers into the US it took us three years to do that we had to petition the Environmental Protection Agency and we

had to prove that these freezers were safe and reliable and all of that but eventually we got it through and we started to bring those freezers into the u.s. there are 40% more efficient and they have zero carbon you know footprint

so this is the kind of thing where this this relationship has worked out to a lot of benefits from somebody on Facebook Thomas knew mark asks Rob you're assuming that the beef and lamb are fired on the left-hand side of your co2

emissions chart what about beef and lamb raised holistically what about dairy produced for generally Thank You Tom great question and yes you're right there can be again one of the things that I was mentioning early on might have gone unnoticed is that animal

agriculture done right can actually be a climate solution we know that you know if if you have a fully integrated operation where the the animals are part of the ecosystem that helps to keep the soil healthy and helps to inset carbon

yes you can actually create good solutions with with all of that lamb beef dairy and and that's those those are some of the things that we're trying to work on and so are some other companies within you know just keep it

in dairy there are some great there's some great work being done by Danone which is most people in America would know it as Danone but Danone is doing some great work and there are there are others as well - Julie snork

does B and J seek out specifically farmers were using or generative practices also as BMJ is thinking about measuring the GS G's questions of its farms and yeah that's about my pay grade so I'll see you guys for that it's a

great question what we're doing is this program that I mentioned before called the carrying dairy program and that's just our that's the that's the way we have named it over the years we actually enroll farms so so there's a kind of a

mutual relationship where farms that are looking to either adapt or you know revise their operations from from where they are right now we'll we'll look to enroll in the Ben & Jerry's program now once they enroll in the Ben & Jerry's

program they're required to actually achieve these standards that we're trying to achieve and one thing I should tell you is that we we don't just ask them to achieve these standards because it's it's it's it's hard work and it's

extra work without providing some incentives so we have been providing premiums over the years now for those of you who have been paying attention to the dairy industry that the family dairy industry in the u.s. is is it almost an

endangered species you know they've been they've had headwinds and crosswinds that have been really difficult over the last five years and so we've been asking farms to raise their standards of regenerative practices or sustainable practices but if they do so if they

reach a certain level we pay them more in premiums and if they reach a higher level than that we pay them even more now over the years it's a it's a continual improvement program we're always trying to tinker with it and see

how we can make it better and as we as we go forward we've been taking it to a level now where we're we're asking them to actually do these specific regenerative practices that will eventually get us to carbon in

setting and again those that can achieve that will get higher premiums than those that can't but everybody that's in the program is moving forward with more sustainable regenerative practices so it's it's a bit of an enrollment program and so farms opt in but once they sign

up then they have to achieve what we're trying to achieve in the program Oh Jen I think you're on mute and asks could you please speak to the 3-year process of signing them up with dignity dignity agreement could you also talk about the

about how you are caring for the people in the supply chain ie the caring dairy strategy you mentioned so I think I understand I'm not sure if I understand if the question is since we've signed up for the milk with dignity program how

it's going or why it took us seemingly you know a few years to actually get signed up I'll kind of answer a little bit of both when when the when the when migrant justice came to us with a milk

with dignity program it was a program that at that time was in a draft form it was in a you know it was in a solid structural draft form but it still needed to be sorted out by the it was a

it's a worker led program so the farm workers were actually designing the program what what we did why it took so long to actually sign up to the program was they were still working through the actual detail of the program and so we

wanted to make sure well you know we're in we actually just over the time we never left the table we were always talking and as they brought back different versions and different iterations to us it got to a point in

time where it's like okay that's a program that we can sign up because part of what we wanted to do is have a program that would work program that could be scaled if a program you know if you start a

program that just can't be successfully completed or scaled up then then what's it worth so that's why it took us a few years to actually get to signing up for the program and all the parties were working diligently on both sides with

all the best intentions and we got there so that was good and then since then you know it's been we've been it's been working out fairly well now it's an it's a new program it's an early program and

again all the different players are working on how it can be successful and sustainable and scalable and I do have to say there are a lot of pioneering dairy farms in Vermont who were the first to sign up first ever for this

kind of a program anywhere in the world that we know of and they've been you know crucial to you know helping this program succeed and being able to provide the the feedback loop that where migrant justice and the milk with

dignity program can receive that and see how the program can be adjusted and successful so I think all the parties have been working on it we believe it's been having great benefits for the farm workers the idea of the program with with it being and

its ultimate success it would be a great program for the farmers and the farm workers where it's it's a it's a problem-solving program it's a solution oriented program and so it's not it's not a gotcha program it's like hey how

can we solve problems for farmers and farm workers so that their operations are successful because you know ultimately farm workers want to have successful farms to be working on and farmers want to be successful to keep their farms going so if everybody is in

this it's got everybody's got skin in the game on this one so so far it's been going okay I think the thing that is of interest to to all of us in this area of work is how to get this program to scale

up and grow so that's the next stage but that's really a question for migrant justice and the milk with dignity program so I just do want to say that she followed up and said and said that she meant the

length of the time just to wait back there okay well there we go I'm gonna let Lissa take over some questions right now our next question is from Julie snoring Julie asks do you anticipate having to pay more for milk produced on

farms where there is greenhouse gas sequester sequestration going on if so what is the percentage increase you are considering for this value that's a great question and it's a complicated it's a complicated question to ask and here's it's a complicated question to

answer and here's why pricing for dairy is based on a federal system and so what what a dairy farm will get will be based on either the federal system price or in the case of organic you actually have contract

prices what we've been doing is we've been actually creating a system of premiums which we've been paying over the years let's see last year I don't have this totally audited but last year we were well over four million dollars

in direct premiums to the farmers that were in the debt caring dairy program to achieve these higher standards of dairy so while we might not necessarily be able to calculate like what per hundredweight cuz dairy for those of you

who know this but for those of you who don't know this dairy is priced at a hundred pounds of dairy or 100 pounds of milk and they call it a hundred weight and so that's the price that you the

pricing unit that we use and we haven't really well over time we have put a few cents per hundredweight above and beyond to to guarantee things like non rb/gh none recombinant bovine growth hormone but over the years with

these sustainable programs that we've had in carrying dairy and the regenerative programs we have with caring dairy we've just put a set of premiums that actually serve as both you know a little more financial support but also it helps to

raise the the level of the farm operations so that's really critical to I will say in the milk with dignity program that's a third-party program kind of like fair trade as a third-party program for sugar and cocoa etc so with

the milk with dignity program we actually pay a premium associated with that program as well so that's to help the premium is designed to help the farmers actually achieve the standards for their farm workers and there is for

certain farm workers that qualify as a lot of math in this they actually get a little bit of a bonus pass through and so so yes so I guess the answer is as we've been using premiums as a way to do

this but I think you know we have to look at the whole federal pricing system so we need to look at policy you know all of these things need a whole set of players to actually adjust what they're

doing to help farmers in the end mispronounced your name since transportation is less than 10% of your carbon footprint it seems important for you to reduce your carbon emissions in this area as well with electrified delivery vans trucks and longer distance

tractor trailers under development by Tesla and others it seems like you will be able to greatly reduce this portion of your footprint in the near future are you working with anyone to accomplish this we we are so in in reducing our

carbon footprint we we really need to go after the bigger slices of the pie and so that's where we're working in dairy and we're working in the other parts of agriculture and in packaging as well now transportation as noted is yeah it's

about 10% of our footprint but the trucks and the people who are transporting it are actually outside of our ownership or control you know they're independent businesses so yes we have to work with them and yes we are

but it's where we have to influence them to make those changes and so the way we're approaching that is we're actually this is where the relationship with the Unilever comes in because really Unilever has more leverage and more

ability to make that change than Ben and Jerry's does because again they're cooked they're closer to and a part of that distribution network were where we aren't so that's that's where you know we're not we're not saying we're not

doing anything about it we're just saying that that's a little more complicated and what we want to do is we want to achieve results and outcomes on those areas of greater carbon footprint first and then and then get there but in

the meantime there are conversations happening about that so that's that's gonna be a little bit down the road so or Lee's comment is Rob thank you for all you do and for lending your time once again to the stroll and slow living

summit and then her question is as climate pollution rises and our politicians delay action our president pulling us out of the Paris agreement what action will ensure we protect our state country and planet what's great question and I think we can't really

tolerate the fact that the administration has pulled us out of Paris I think we have to behave and continue to move forward with those those kind of policies being supported now whether they're supported at the state level which again a lot of states

are coming up with plans that will supersede and ascend what the federal government is doing either in Vermont or California or you name it where where we look is is what we try to do is identify what policy is

going to be effective and can we weigh in or support policy either at a state level or a federal level to push things forward now I will say there is a great movement again there's this the benefit corporation movement so for those of you

who are not familiar with this there is a program run by B lab which has set up a standard for businesses to you you take an assessment you get measured you get audited and if you have a particular

score you are showing that you are operating under the highest standards of social economic and environmental criteria and so B lab is set up that criteria and so there's there's a whole community of certified B corpse there are a lot in Vermont by the way oh and

realize there are people outside of Vermont on this call but so there are a lot of I think there are pockets like Portland Oregon Boulder Colorado Vermont North Carolina and in San Francisco in Los Angeles California there are pockets

where there are great groups of B corpse that are striving to take climate action within their own companies but also advocate for strong policy at the federal level at the state level and at the local level so that B Corp movement

is starting to have a lot of influence and starting to get some momentum but we also are with some nonprofit organizations such as Ceres which has a an advocacy arm that goes by the acronym of bicep and we're members of that

organization and that group actually does lobby with in Washington for stronger policy and there's the American Sustainable Business Council which is also kind of a very progressive group that is in Washington lobbying for strong climate policy so you know you

have to attack at all different ways you have to tack it in a personal level where you can make your own changes in your lifestyle but at a corporate level we're seeing more of that in the B Corp

community and then at policy level and we're seeing between NGOs and businesses actually weigh in on stronger federal policy and stronger state policy Thanks first she asks how do you get the word out educate people about the situation

of dairy farmers to the public as those here already know what can we do to help dairy farmers and what is the best way to thanks yes going out to buy a planner - oh thank you for that well it's a good

question and I think we need to do a better job of actually communicating the this situation with dairy farms we have an internal team at Ben & Jerry's which has actually been convened to just do this we internally we've said you know

what we haven't been telling this story well enough it hasn't been as visible as we want it to be and so we're actually working on different ways to have a methodical sort of communication plan to start telling this story now June is

actually dairy month so there's a great opportunity of course everybody's a little bit off the rails with you know Ark ovid crisis and the certain ways of working that we're operating under right now but we agree we we need to do a

better job of telling that story and so we actually we do have a team internally and you know and we'll reach out to other players within the dairy industry to see where we can do a better job of

that so that recognizes that we got to do something better and so now we've got something in place I wish I could tell you exactly what but I can't right now parade where you March cows down she's following up

on the caring theory response how do they measure the level of change on farms okay yes I forgot to answer that part of the question so we are setting up what we do have a series of metrics already and actually we're working with

an industry group now to make sure that we have a really good set of metrics specifically with carbon and you know climate change but we have had a set of metrics that we've been measuring over time such as percentage of acreage that

is cover cropped percentage of acreage that uses no-till or low till you know these are these are practices that if they're in place will help to mitigate climate change and actually eventually when we get all this completely in place

we'll we'll start in setting carbon so we do have metrics on that and we've been seeing in our group I don't have them at the top of my head but we've been seeing a huge increase in those practices such as cover cropping crop

rotations no-till low till really high percentages in the Karen dairy program again based on providing the incentives you know you do this will pay you more and then of course we all benefit because the operation is much more

sustainable so I will say that we're just finishing up every year we do an annual report which we publish online the current report is for 2019 it should be published sometime this month you know it has to go through it actually

goes through an audit process it goes through a review process our independent board of directors a social mission look at it so it has a lot of gates to get through it's been through most of them and now it's actually in

the process of designing for online publication so hopefully we'll see it up sometime in mid to late June and that we'll have some that has a lot of information in it but it will have a lot of information about our greenhouse gas

program but also our dairy program and and and other programs such as social equity program both internal and external you know we're trying to become the company that we aspire to be and we know we've got a long way to go when it

comes to diversity equity and inclusion so that report is a great report to look at right now the report that's online is kind of old it's like from 2018 this report it's gonna be on 2019 which I know was almost six months ago no it was

six months ago but the report itself is written with both a rearview mirror and and looking through the windshield because we're talking about what we're doing this year too so it's it's a nice report to get all of the different

details information statistics and metrics - could you tell us what has been going on at ventures that formed that response you know this is a centuries-old problem and it's going to take us a long time to actually get on

the right Road and I just want to share that Ben and Jerry's years ago and I can't remember exactly how many years ago but let's just say it was about five years ago realize that in terms of social equity and diversity and

inclusion we weren't really the company we wanted to be and so we invited up a lot of the leaders that you're seeing on TV these days a lot of a lot of the leaders in the you know and civil rights

and you know diversity equity and inclusion we invited them up to Vermont to have a town hall and we asked them and these were really some of the top experts if if I were to tell you who came you would say oh I saw

MSNBC last night but anyways we sat and listened and it was leadership and staff we listened to them to help us understand what we didn't even know to ask ourselves and of course that that took us right away to implicit bias and

so what we did was we started to work with a couple of these organizations that were really good to consult us in the path and the plan to really become the company we aspire to be a company that really is diverse and equitable and

inclusive and so we started doing things which may sound familiar to many on this call we started to do implicit bias training and then we started to do other workshops on really learning the history of structural and institutionalized

racism in this country I will tell you it was shocking to me to learn and I'm ashamed to say this but you know my father is a World War two veteran and he came home and he had all the benefits of

the GI Bill and blah blah blah well the black GIS who came home from World War two who put their lives on the line they didn't get the same benefits they got blackballed they didn't get the mortgages they couldn't get the the

housing that they should have gotten and while I understood there was a lot of underlying structural issues you know for 400 years that that little illustration woke up this guy's had to say that's nuts I can't believe that

happened and that was federal policy written into federal books and they and they showed in this one documentary that I was watching and was that kind of aha moment that said wow I'm complicit because I've been part of a structural

system that I've been just turning my head and ignoring and so that's what's been going on inside Ben and Jerry's and we've we've been working with group by the name of race forward which works with human municipalities organizations

corporations to help design plans of how to actually work through the stages you have to work through this slowly you know we may have heard of this fact that you know a lot of white people want to do some good but sometimes when you're

in a hurry you could do more harm than good so you really need to kind of learn things about structural racism and then figure out what you can do to start changing your own behavior and then your community behavior and in in community I

mean wherever you're either working or you know day to day and then and then your larger community you know where you live and then the nation so it is a slow step process it's a total marathon this is not a sprint I think what's really

encouraging about this current moment and and I lift I'm old enough to have lived through I was young but I would live through the civil rights movement in the moment and you know when this all started I said to my wife I said man

this is reminding me in 1968 and of course now we've heard that a lot but what's different about now that 1968 is white people are finally understanding that we have been part of the problem by being silent and being complicit and you

have to get over that discomfort with yourself it's not about you it's about the structural racism and so what we've been doing at Ben & Jerry's is we've been trying to you know work through those stages we have a lot of internal

working groups that that look at you know company culture diversity of suppliers you know our own kind of language and you know do people feel included and supported or not and so there's that side and then externally what people see more often is

our campaigns you know where we're supporting black lives matter or Color of Change or the Advancement Project different organizations that are really at the front frontlines of actually changing things like criminal justice reform and Voting Rights and thinks it's

the Poor People's Campaign and Reverend barber so you know there's just so much to do and it's just time to do it one of the connections or the ability to you know put a bunch of staff onto one

issue to figure out what to do when you have any advice for those smaller smaller businesses you know there are a lot of resources I think education you know it really is about doing that the individual work in part of the

individual work is really learning things and there are a lot of resources available in terms of of reading I'm just wondering how we could I don't I don't have a reading list that I could put on the chat box right now and I

don't know how effective we might be and trying to figure out how to move that to people who are on this call or interested in that but what I could do is send a list maybe to Jen and Lissa

and then maybe if people want to get that kind of reading list that would be good I think you start there and what that does is that kind of turns the light bulbs on and that helps you to think

through what the next steps might be that's just a nice thing you can send out so really every single person and you know we have to do something gonna start somewhere that's a it's a good start so yeah I think it's the last of

the questions that we had unless Lissa has anything else um I will personally just say thank you so much and this is a great call and it's been very thematic so far throughout the dungeon on the same things I think we're all thinking

about the same things and just so great to hear that there's positive change is actually happening and especially from such a you know role was such a huge company like Ben & Jerry's well thank you it's been a pleasure and

you know I hope it's been beneficial in some small way absolutely thank you rob for being on the call thank you to our attendees this is recorded and it will be able to be accessed by all our attendees and because it's being

reported I have to say a a happy birthday to Jen Brandt it is her birthday today and I wanted to have be on every single recording we do today happy birthday Jen again thank you no thank you so much for being here it was

a pleasure and I appreciate all of your experience your wisdom sharing it with us and our and our attendees well thank you all right well thank you everyone for joining us and we will see you back here tomorrow we have another lineup of

awesome panels we have at one o'clock our financing farming panel with Julie snork who is one of our attendees today and we also at three o'clock have our panel on agriculture policy and a time of uncertainty with david zuckerman or

lieutenant governor so I feel you'll be there and join us for that and have a good night everybody right thank you everyone you