Eliminating Deforestation

Forests and other natural ecosystems are critical to help mitigate climate risks, improve climate change resiliency, and safeguard biodiversity and can provide livelihoods and economic opportunities for forest-based communities. However, deforestation, forest degradation, and natural ecosystem conversion remain major global challenges with broad implications. These challenges are a manifestation of a complex set of root causes that vary from location to location, including poverty, limited knowledge of sustainable farming practices and poor law enforcement.

Hershey is committed to achieving a deforestation and conversion-free supply chain for the cocoa, palm oil, pulp & paper (packaging), and direct soy we source by December 31, 2025, while respecting and protecting the human rights of individuals. Guided by our No Deforestation Policy, we will work within our individual commodity supply chains to drive sustainable practices with our suppliers and within the industry to achieve this.

Supplier Development

Through complementary policies, commitments and certification programs, we have crafted approaches relevant to specific raw materials that we source, including specific No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) and traceability commitments for palm oil and pulp and paper.

Our suppliers are critical partners in enabling a more resilient supply chain. Hershey recognizes the importance of collaboration while ensuring the local knowledge of farmers and communities are taken into account as critical context.

We are advancing traceability capabilities and adapting the management of good agricultural practices, environmental and social programs by leveraging collective learnings of Hershey, our suppliers and implementation partners. This includes:

• Conducting formalized reviews of suppliers’ internal traceability systems, documentation and physical controls to ensure segregation of cocoa beans from the farm to the supplier’s processing facility in origin.
• Implementing cocoa bean material flow assessments of suppliers’ processing factories to assess strengths, opportunities and pragmatic considerations to ensure segregated production for Hershey. 
• Supporting supplier’s continuous improvement efforts to achieve Hershey’s key requirements specification 
• Conducting joint field assessments to better understand quantitative and qualitative impact on farmers. 

Enhanced Monitoring

We work with partners like Sourcemap, Earthworm Foundation and Airbus’s Starling satellite to accelerate monitoring and verification along supply chains to map and monitor forest areas around our cocoa and palm suppliers with plans to extend to pulp and paper and soy suppliers.

Protecting Biodiversity

Mabi-Yaya Nature Reserve p

In partnership with the Foundation for Parks and Reserves of Côte d’Ivoire (FPRCI), we’re for the conservation of the Mabi-Yaya Nature Reserve, where the critically endangered Western chimpanzee lives. The project aims to restore 1,020 hectares of deforested areas, maintain 75 kilometers of park borders, deploy 15 camera traps for wildlife monitoring and support 15 environmental school clubs in surrounding communities.

Kakum National Park

Kakum National Park is one of the most biologically rich forests in Ghana. We work to protect biodiversity and promote the financial well-being of people who live and farm near the park. Since 2018, Hershey has monitored bird biodiversity in the Kakum Conservation Area, one of the most biologically rich forests in Ghana. Building on these efforts, we worked with partners to design a program to protect both the biodiversity of this important habitat and the financial well-being of the people who live and farm nearby which includes:

• Climate-smart cocoa production
• Increased collaboration among stakeholders and landscape-level governance and land-use planning
• Monitoring forests and increased patrolling, with rapid response units
• Monitoring social and environmental safeguards

Lobu Tayas Village Forest

With the Forest Conservation Fund, Hershey has invested to empower the people of Lobu Tayas to protect their local forest by securing land rights for over 12,000 hectares of forest in North Sumatra Province, Indonesia. 

Arbor Day Foundation

Since 2017, Hershey’s partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation has restored forest habitats across the U.S., planting more than one million trees together, restoring more than 2,300 acres of forest. Our collaboration extends internationally to include the planting of 10,000 trees along the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, reversing destruction of monarch butterfly nesting sites by logging that threatens the species.