“100% sustainably sourced cocoa,” says the sign on the stand promoting Cadbury, a popular chocolate brand of Mondelez International. Many chocolate brands draw on similar language to promote their products— “ethically sourced”, “sustainable cocoa”—but are these claims verified?
Let’s look at the case of Cadbury’s parent company, Mondelez. Last year, the company participated in the 2022 Chocolate Scorecard, meaning they filled out a survey with key information about their cocoa sourcing practices which was later graded by experts. Here’s the rating given by experts, along with the color code.
As you can see, these are not the ratings of a company which is leading the industry in sustainability. You might wonder if Mondelez has improved drastically since these ratings were awarded last year, and if that improvement might explain the self-granted sustainability medal on the company’s marketing materials.
Unfortunately, in a move we interpret as a major lack of transparency from a multi-billion-dollar company, Mondelez chose not to participate in the 2023 Chocolate Scorecard, making it hard for us to verify any improvement in their practices.
Freedom United believes the mere expression “100% sustainable” is in itself deceitful. It suggests that there is an end point you can reach where you’re done – you cannot be any more sustainable, you’ve reached the sustainability summit.
And in any industry, that would be hard to believe, but in the chocolate industry especially, that makes our eyes roll right back. That’s because several serious environmental and social issues continue to pervade the cocoa sector, including child and forced labor, deforestation, exploitative poverty, and more.
Sustainability claims made by companies are defined narrowly to refer only to their own programs, which may foster sustainable practices but rarely guarantee good conditions for the farming communities they source from.
For example, a farmer could participate in a company’s “sustainability” program by receiving a cookstove or taking part in a survey. The company may then describe the cocoa that farmer supplies as “sustainable” because they fall in some way under their program, even though they might be extremely poor and their children may be engaging in dangerous labor to help them make ends meet rather than going to school. Now, would you call that “sustainable”?
Another reason to be wary of brands that claim “100% sustainability” is the fact that so much of the cocoa companies buy is not traceable. The 2023 Chocolate Scorecard found that only 11% of the chocolate companies that participated have traced their cocoa to its origin. On average, 40% of cocoa is purchased indirectly, meaning the buyer doesn’t know who they bought it from or where it came from.
If a company doesn’t know where its cocoa comes from, then they can’t even begin to assess what conditions it was grown under; if the farmers and their families are living in extreme poverty; if forced or child labor was used; if old growth trees were cleared in the process. Ultimately, they cannot know if it is “sustainable” cocoa or not.
Poverty is widespread among cocoa-growing communities, especially in West Africa, and is a key driver of many other issues, including forced and child labor and deforestation.
While the average cocoa farmer was earning as little as US$1.20 per day, the global chocolate market was valued at a revenue of USD 131.9 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow at 4.50% annually. If chocolate companies are serious about sustainability, they must find a way to pay farmers more for cocoa.
