Climate changes and soil have mutual effects on each other. EEA reported that the EU thematic strategy for soil protection and its implementation report emphasizes the importance of healthy soil in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Land use and soil protection can be considered crucial in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.
WELEDA, a company that produces natural products originating from healthy soils for over 100 years, has laid its heart and will continuously commit itself to fertilize lands and bolstering sustainability to give back to mother earth:
“Our mission is to make the world healthier and more beautiful. And we are also committed to growing because we think we can reach more people and by doing so we can increase the awareness about the connection between nature and human beings” says a member of the Executive Board at WELEDA, Nataliya Yarmolenko.
Dr. Stefan Siemer, Head of Corporate Sustainability at WELEDA elaborates that the soil can gain higher resilience, and fertility and have a stronger capacity in storing carbon if it is cultivated appropriately through bio-dynamic and sustainable principles.
As a company that values the resources of nature in a wholehearted way, WELEDA has set its core value on protecting the soil. It guarantees transparency in supply chain management and a high standard of ecological and biodiverse requirements by becoming one of the two companies worldwide that hold an Ethical Sourcing System Certificate of UEBT (Union for Ethical BioTrade).
Furthermore, WELEDA already offset and reduced the company-related emissions at the Scope 1 and 2 levels of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) in 2021. “We will achieve climate neutrality amongst other things with multifunctional photovoltaics and geothermal energy”, says Dr. Siemer.
In order to acquire innovative and efficient solutions for achieving sustainability, WELEDA brings in specialists from various aspects of the business. For example, it joins hands with right based on Sciences, a climate-tech company based in Germany. As the CEO of right. based on sciences, Hannah Helmke says, “we are working on setting scientifically based climate goals and we are working together on creating scenarios that showcase the measures and strategies.”
As result, WELEDA’s headquarter in Arlesheim, Switzerland is operating fully on regenerative energy even in energy-intensive productions, and from October 2022, all WELEDA’s products worldwide have reached the target of being climate neutral.
WELEDA firmly believes in the power of trustful and long-term relationships with suppliers and cultivation partners. Dr. Siemer explains, “this is the basis for growing together and also confidently talking about the issues if things don’t run perfectly.”
SEKEM is a farm based in Egypt, cultivating various products, such as cotton, medical herbs, and grains to be used as the ingredients for WELEDA’s products. Sharing the same vision with WELEDA, SEKEM has dedicated itself to respecting biodiversity and operating biodynamic agriculture:
“Biodynamic agriculture is mainly trying to handle and treat all the parts of a farm in such a way that the best possible outcomes of agriculture products can be achieved,” explains Helmy Abouleish, CEO at SEKEM. By doing so, SEKEM has developed a circular economy, which benefits not only the economy in Egypt but also the sustainability of farming and the environment.
