Is the biggest oat drink company in the world.
And the company says its goal is to deliver products
that have a minimal environmental impact. Well, to
mark Earth Month, this April Cheddar news is highlighting
companies with a focus on sustainability. Joining me now
is Ashley Allen, chief sustainability Officer at O.
Ashley. Thank you so much for coming on the
show and let's dive right in and so what are
some of the main ways that your company has worked
to improve its sustainability efforts just this past year?
Thanks so much for having me on my favorite month
, Earth Month. You know, it, it
really starts at the core of our business, our
company mission. Um We state our mission as um
that we want to make it easy for people to
eat better and live healthier lives without recklessly taxing the
planet's resources. So what that means for Oatley is
really engaging throughout our entire value chain from oat farmers
all the way to consumers and finding ways to both
reduce our climate footprint and help consumers reduce theirs.
Let's talk about the climate footprint labeling. Uh That's
now being rolled out earlier this year on some of
your products in North America, Ashley. What does
it look like? And what kind of information does
it give shoppers? I'm so excited about this.
It's, it's pretty new in the US to have
a climate label on your product. It's something that
we've been doing in Europe uh on our products for
a number of years globally. We have about 100
and 50 products that we include a climate footprint in
the US. Uh We've just launched with our climate
foot on 16 products including our new uh newly reformulated
oat girts. And the goal there is really to
help enable consumers to start to think about what is
the impact of the food that they eat and how
might that contribute to big global challenges like climate change
? I know your company also recently conducting a study
actually on the environmental impact of its only barista product
compared to cow's milk. What did this study find
? That's right. We actually conducted a pretty broad
scale uh life cycle analysis covering a number of our
products in both Europe and the US. As an
example of the findings in the US, our Oatley
Barista showed a 46% lower climate footprint than comparable cow's
milk and a 71% lower water use than comparable cow's
milk. It's really important I think for people to
think through the impact of the different foods that they're
choosing day to day and how this might also contribute
to their climate footprint. I'm I'm curious actually to
dig a bit deeper here too, just in terms
of how a plant based diet or choosing plant based
alternatives options uh over non plant based food, whether
it's meat, dairy, you name it, how
that can broadly help the environment? Did the study
look into that at all? Yeah, the study
looked across nine different environmental indicators. I mentioned climate
change, I mentioned water, but it also looked
at things like mineral use, land use, water
quality and, and a number of different environmental impacts
. The study was really focused on Oatley versus cow's
milk. But overall, we're seeing a broad swath
of evidence that's pointing more and more to how a
plant based diet can actually really benefit the planet.
So there's just a number of studies that are showing
up. Um I'm just curious too, Ashley in
terms of how your company where you are, the
Chief Sustainability Officer is gonna use this report to try
to improve your own sustainability efforts. Absolutely. You
know, the study was not just about comparing our
product to cow's milk, but also really diving deep
on the climate impact of our products and showing what
um areas of our operations are actually uh driving emissions
. For example, um we have talked a lot
about oats and as our main ingredient, how that
really drives our climate footprint. So part of our
priority is really working with farmers to work toward more
regenerative agriculture practices and to help that really make agriculture
a sink for carbon rather than um an emissions driver
. All right, Ashley Allen, chief sustainability Officer
at Ashley, thank you so much uh for sharing
more about the company and your own sustainability efforts.
Of course, a mid earth month.