Harvest House to supply climate-neutral certified salads
13 February 2023
From now on, Harvest House can supply its tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumbers with a climate-neutral label. The salads specialist has been awarded the Climate Neutral Certified sustainability label for this purpose.
Harvest House is a producer organisation of Dutch growers of tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumbers. The label proves that Harvest House measures the CO2 emissions of its products, is obliged to set ambitious reduction targets each year, and compensates for the remaining emissions. ‘We want our cultivation practices to be climate neutral by 2040 and by being able to offer climate-neutral certified products, we are taking a step in the right direction,’ explains Marco Hanemaaijer, Chain Manager at Harvest House. The certification for climate-neutral certified salads is carried out by an independent party. Every year, an audit is carried out to assess the efforts made by Harvest House.
Reduction plans
The growers’ cooperative has clearly identified the current environmental impact of its products. Hanemaaijer explains: ‘We can do this with HortiFootPrint, which allows us to successfully measure what the impact is on sixteen different sustainability variables. One of these is CO2 emissions. We then formulate reduction plans together with our growers for this part of our salads chain. The quality label requires us to reduce emissions by 2.5% every year. But we go a step further. Our ambition is to have halved our CO2 equivalent emissions per kilogram of product by 2030 compared with 2020 levels.’
Compensation
Harvest House is constantly looking for ways to curb its energy consumption and reduce its CO2 emissions. ‘Unfortunately, emission-free cultivation is not yet possible, but we are working hard to attain this. Until that time, the criteria of Climate Neutral Certified give us the freedom to compensate for remaining emissions,’ Hanemaaijer says.
Customers looking for climate-neutral certified salads are in good hands with Harvest House. Together, we can put climate-neutral certified products on shop shelves. The label can be awarded to all products grown by Harvest House growers.
