Stanford has made a conscious effort to minimize the environmental impact of its operations.  Sustainable activities include not only purchasing food from within a 200 mile radius from the University, buying organic grass fed beef, and purchasing seasonal items, but also setting up organic herb gardens managed by students.  

"We are not provided with any subsidies to support our sustainability efforts so the projects we develop must be 'sustainable' and make sense from a financial standpoint as well,”  comments Eric Montell.                                                                                               

Stanford University was the first university in the nation to be entirely green certified for it's sustainable practices.  Stanford Dining's program was instrumental in obtaining the certification for the campus.                                                                                            

 Photo: Rafi Taharian     

Barilla and Sustainability
Barilla is aware that the community in which we operate consists of more than our production sites – the social and territorial environments where those plants are located are also involved. Therefore, we try to interact with the entire community by applying our values of correctness and transparency.

Our ethical and social responsibility also extends to the communities that produce raw materials, in compliance with environmental, cultural and social sustainability with the goal of fulfilling each individual’s right to a healthy and nutritionally balanced diet.

Corporate Social Responsibility – Barilla
For more than 125 years, one of Barilla’s basic tenets has been the need to reconcile work with the equally fundamental value of human health and proper management of all that is required to make industrial products. These are the DNA of Barilla itself. Furthermore, the company has long understood that companies that look to the future cannot solely be production engines, but must also convey values and models of behavior.

For this reason, Barilla has chosen to generate value through the concept of sustainability, meaning it does business without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs, in a socially responsible manner. As an industrial company, Barilla acts in knowledge that the planet’s resources are finite and must be used with care by six billion people. The goal must therefore be to preserve the planet for future generations by working on 3 fronts: economic, environmental and social. These are the 3 pillars of sustainable development.

Barilla, food safety & GMO’s
Every year, Barilla dedicated more than 2,000 work days to inspections of supplier sites and conduct more than 200,000 tests of incoming raw materials to guarantee their quality and that they conform to the standards and 2,000 to check for the absence of contaminating agents and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s). In fact, Barilla has pledged not to use GMO’s and has introduced purchasing procedures and supply-chain management that to provide the highest levels of freedom from GMO’s. On average, Barilla performs a test every 30 seconds.

Barilla & the Environment
Barilla believes it is our responsibility to put in place policies to protect the ecosystem, so we are committed to designing, producing and packaging our products in ways that fully respect the environment and human health. 

Specifically, in recent years we have focused on researching business strategies and activities that meet the company’s needs and those of suppliers and that, at the same time, protect and support natural resources and man’s interaction with them.
By doing so, we wish to prevent even the smallest amount of pollution, optimize management of production processes and technologies, train our employees so that they are sensitive to this issue and finally educate others about why “clean” production makes sense for suppliers and for informed consumers, so that we set off a positive chain of events.

The Barilla Environmental Management System was developed in 2003 and in recent years it has been applied to all the Barilla production sites in Italy.

In 2005 we also undertook an important energy saving project in line with the Kyoto protocol. During 2005, this project led to savings of 3% over 2004, in consumption of electricity and natural gas through technical and management actions that regarded:
 Lighting systems
 Ovens and boilers
 Air compressors
 Refrigeration and air conditioning units.
These savings are equal to the annual consumption of a town with approximately 750 residents (Figure based on average annual consumption of 4,700 Kwh per capita)

Barilla & Social Accountability
For Barilla, attention to the social aspect of sustainability translates in to focus on people, whether those who participate in the manufacturing process or those who are members of the local communities where Barilla facilities are located.

 The main parameters for Barilla’s people-oriented way of doing business are taken from the UN Declaration of Human Rights and International Labour Organization (ILO) guidelines and include universal rights, the right to work, health, pay and working hours, freedom of assembly and safety.

In addition to these firmly held and universally shared principles, Barilla constantly monitors the potential social impact stemming from its supply chain and implements specific plans of action for the supply chains.  In this regards, in 1999, Barilla created its own Code of Conduct (Social Audit Program) based on the international norm SA800. This norm applies to all suppliers in non European countries. 
 

Barilla & Animal Welfare
In addition to a focus on health and consumer protection, Barilla considers animal welfare part of its quality assurance policy.  More specifically, as the largest consumer of eggs in Europe, the Company is especially mindful of the more than 2,500,000 egg-laying hens that produce the eggs used to make its egg pasta and bakery products (representing more than 5% of all Italian production). At Barilla supplier chicken farms, hens are raised in environment controlled and stable temperature, light and ventilation and where they may move freely and, above all, are fed a vegetable diet, free of additives, as required and regulated by our supply specifications. These conditions meet fully the “animal Rights Charter” proposed by UNESCO in 1987 to which Barilla subscribes in full.

Barilla is also currently evaluating the feasibility of obtaining a supply of eggs from free range (i.e. not caged) hens in order to develop even better conditions for the health of its laying hens.

For more information about Barilla and Sustainability, please contact foodservice@barilla-usa.com