As a global retailer, our aim is to tackle the many diverse challenges that our forests face from a retailer’s perspective. The focus of our work lays on our own supply chains and direct suppliers, but also beyond our own operations by collaboration with multi-stakeholder initiatives to deliver industry-wide change.

• Public commitment to deforestation-free supply chains: We aim to eliminate deforestation from our high-priority supply chains by 2030. We have thoroughly examined the deforestation risk within our supply chains in 2020 and identified the high-priority supply chains with regards to tackling deforestation. We will publish Position Statement containing further details later on this year.
• Palm oil: The palm oil sector is one of the world’s biggest drivers for deforestation. For this reason, we have started engaging for the conservation of forests in this area in 2011 already. We were recognised as top discount retailer by the WWF International in their 2020 Palm Oil Scorecard. More information on our palm oil actions incl. our project to support smallholders is displayed on our international website.
• Soy: About 80% of global soy production is used to feed livestock and most of it is grown in South America, where deforestation for agricultural land is prevalent. To address sustainability challenges and increase transparency in the soy supply chain, we co-founded the Soy Transparency Coalition (STC) together with over 30 global businesses. The STC’s focus lies on engaging large soy traders and on assessing their performance towards sustainable soy.

• Our support for sustainable charcoal production in Namibia was honoured with the German Sustainability Heroes Award 2020. ALDI SOUTH Germany, HOFER S/E and ALDI Nord together with the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) initiated the project in 2018, as in Namibia invasive thorn bushes take over more and more farmland areas. This leads to a reduction in productivity, biodiversity and groundwater recovery. Using these bushes to produce charcoal protects forests and Namibia’s biodiversity.
• ALDI SOUTH Germany supports a mangrove protection and reforestation project in India and Costa Rica, where more than 70 hectares of new mangrove forest was planted by 2020. Mangroves contain rich biodiversity, offer protection from extreme weather conditions such as storms or floods to local people and bind climate-damaging CO2.
• We also support a project in the world’s largest rainforest, the Brazilian Amazon, which aims to provide land rights for its inhabitants - the “Ribeirinhos”. This secures the livelihood of the local residents and along with it, protects around 3,000 hectares of rainforest.