SUSTAINABILTY
Our online sustainability report is divided into six major areas — sourcing, products and packaging, customers, operations, employees and community. Within each of these areas , you will find our key environmental and social objectives, what we are working on, our goals and our results. This format allows us to update the site regularly and link to related information. We also hope this format will encourage you to share your thoughts with us. At the bottom of every section is an email link you can use to send us your questions, opinions and ideas.
We report in accordance with our fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30. For ease of reading, we refer to the year according to the end of the fiscal year — for example, the fiscal year ending 6/30/11 is referred to as 2011.
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A Message from our CEO
While our corporate responsibility has certainly evolved since Frontier began in 1976, we have never wavered in our commitment to doing business in an environmentally and socially responsible way. In 2005 we started publicly sharing a detailed look at our sustainability efforts — both our accomplishments and our disappointments — in annual Sustainability Reports, which we now make even more accessible by putting them on our website.
Sustainability has always been a core value for us — even before it became a catchword. From the beginning, we've had a commitment to the environment, organics, fair trade practices (establishing direct, non-exploitive sourcing relationships), product integrity, our employees' health and well being, improving the communities where we do business — and, with regard to all of these, full disclosure and open, honest communication.
We're a cooperative made up of over 35,000 member/owners whose values have directed us — and whose patronage has given us the necessary solid financial foundation — to build a more sustainable, responsible company.
But there is still work to be done.
Our Well Earth program is an outstanding model of a sustainable sourcing program, making a determined effort to convert additional acres around the globe to organic farming. We source directly from small farmers in some of the most remote regions in the world. This not only creates profitable, stable markets for these supplier partners, but it also gives us the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to their communities' healthcare, education and business development. One of the rewards of the effort it takes to grow this program is seeing the improvement Well Earth brings to these hard working, but often struggling, communities.
It will also take more time, money and determination to continue to improve the sustainability of our operations — reducing our energy needs, using resources more effectively, reducing our waste, and finding more sustainable packaging alternatives. These are not easy tasks, but, as this report shows, we have made substantial progress towards our goals. And we are committed to continuing that progress.
This report also shows that we’re not perfect. In fact, one of the goals of these annual Sustainability Reports is to identify areas of weakness so that we can address them. But in spite of some setbacks, I think you can see that we're committed to becoming an even more sustainable company. And we will continue to be — as we have always been — fully transparent about our sustainability successes and failures. We're confident that our co-op, our stakeholders, and the public will benefit from this honest reporting.
We’re trying to build an organization where sustainability is a consideration in every task and decision. We welcome your input on how to do this better — and invite you to start by reviewing this report.
Tony Bedard, CEO
Frontier Natural Products Co-op
P.S. After you have looked over the report, please let us know what you think about the sustainability programs described in it and our reporting methods. We welcome your participation in the process of making Frontier a more sustainable company.
We have never wavered in our commitment to
doing business in an environmentally and socially responsible way.
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An inside look at Frontier Co-op
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