Preserving our planet’s resources
We are applying our technologies, reach and in-house expertise toward a mutually beneficial relationship between Croda and nature for a thriving planet and society.
Our long-standing relationship with nature and our leadership commitment enable us to work not only to mitigate our negative impacts but to actively improve the state of nature and people's lives through active engagement and monitoring of our land footprint, and technological innovation. Our products will enable more land to be saved than is used to grow our bio-based raw materials and our innovation will help customers to mitigate the impact of climate change and land degradation, increasing the availability of land suitable for growing crops. By becoming Land Positive we will directly contribute towards the following UN SDG targets:
SDG 2.3, SDG 2.4, SDG 12.2, SDG 13.2, SDG 15.2, SDG 15.3, SDG 15.5
Nature positive
We are further developing our understanding of relevant and leading initiatives relating to nature, including the concept of nature positive: requirements, challenges, and how it can be measured. As we transform from Land Positive towards net nature positive, we will better understand the ways that each of our major manufacturing sites and finished ingredients impact or depend upon biodiversity, and we will drive positive change in our raw material and supplier selection. Importantly, solutions to reduce the risk of nature loss will shape our customers’ ingredient and supplier selection, and proactively contribute to their sustainability goals.
Land Positive: our world in 2030
Our targets
Innovation
Our progress
Resource and biodiversity conservation
Benefits from two breakthrough technologies launched in 2022 were proven across field trials with customers, demonstrating the importance of our collaborative approach and customer intimacy. These latest innovative technologies protect biodiversity and mitigate the impact of a changing climate and land degradation, bringing our total breakthrough technologies launched since 2020 to four.
We are accelerating our pace towards achieving our milestone target of 10 breakthrough technologies by 2024, and our 2030 target to bring an average of two to market each year, aligning with our target and helping our customers mitigate the impact of climate change and land degradation.
As a company that has been close to the legislative process of new rules banning microplastics from EU/EEA seed treatments, which is expected to be adopted into EU legislation during 2023, we began our journey to a microplastic-free seed treatment portfolio four years ago. During 2022, we published our whitepaper ‘A microplastic-free future for seed treatments’, with the aim to share our understanding of the legislation and wider knowledge on the topic, to provide recommendations for what it means for the industry and how collaboration and partnering can help support effective adoption of the legislation.
More broadly, within our safe and sustainable design approach, biodegradability screening at early stages of innovation is one of the critical success criteria. We are further developing our capabilities to measure biodegradability of polymers, working with external accredited testing partners and field experts. Three specialist labs with these screening capabilities, including automated testing, are being established at our existing Princeton, Daresbury and Enkhuizen locations.
Inspiring innovation
In 2019, almost four years before the adoption of the recent Kunming – Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at COP15, we realised that we needed a detailed understanding of our land footprint, a prerequisite to understand our impact on nature and biodiversity. Improving the yield of crops with our adjuvant technologies leads to lowering the land area required to grow one tonne of crop, expressed as land saving, externally validated by Avieco, taking into account the carbon and water savings associated with reducing the land required to grow the crop.
In 2022, combining the yield benefits from our seed coatings, adjuvants and bio-stimulants, total land saved was 145,709 hectares, equivalent to 204,074 football pitches, representing an increase of 15.7% (2021: 33,735 hectares), and 58.0% above our 2019 baseline. We remain on track to hit our 2024 intermediate milestone of saving at least 80,000 hectares per year more than in 2019, and our 2030 target of saving 200,000 hectares per year more than in 2019. In 2022, 58.2% of our land saved is in Asia and Latin America, focusing on areas with the highest demand for food productivity and the greatest threat of deforestation.
Read more about sustainability being at the heart of what we do:
Croda joins the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
UK Government to support expansion of Croda's lipid systems manufacturing facility
