June : 5 key moments to highlight Sodexo’s commitments
The World Days during the month of June were an opportunity for Sodexo to focus on the commitments and actions that we take to support the environment, local communities and individuals throughout the year.
5 June: World Environment Day
Protecting the environment is a challenge for our generation and future ones. This translates into several commitments and initiatives that Sodexo deploy in our different trades.
In our catering activities in particular, we favour sustainable purchasing by promoting locavorism or by collaborating with committed partners, such as Fairtrade Lëtzebuerg who respect the earth and human work.
Preserving the environment also means fighting against pollution caused by single-use plastics. This is why we are proud we signed the IMS Manifesto “Zero Single Use Plastic” in 2018. Removal of straws, stirrers, more than 320,000 plastic bottles of water per year, bags, plastic cutlery… significant measures implemented in all our catering points.
Water, the most important of our resources, is also a challenge in our kitchens. With this in mind, we raise awareness among our teams and train them to keep water use to a minimum.
8 June: World Oceans Day
How to fight against overfishing and illegal fishing? By removing endangered species from our menus and giving priority to eco-labelled seafood products. Thus, 17 endangered marine species have already been removed from our procurement catalogue.
Protecting our oceans also means removing marine litter, including plastic waste. 5,000 billion pieces of plastic are floating in our oceans, implying that about 700 species of marine species have already ingested plastic or have been trapped in it. That being said, fighting against single-use plastic is more than necessary.
12 June: World Wellness Day
More than a slogan: the “Quality of Life services” is our mission. For the World Wellness Day, we wanted to feature our teams as well as the residents of the Senior institutions we manage.
Our philosophy: give meaning and taste for life to our seniors. The well-being of more than 600 Luxembourgish residents is in the hands of our 700 colleagues, who work every day to make them feel “at home”. Caregiver, Chef, educator, nurse, physiotherapist, cleaning agent, psychologist, hairdresser… So many professions and professionals at the service of the residents for their comfort and health.
15 June: World Hunger Day
690 million people suffer from hunger in the world. At our level, we work to fight against malnutrition and hunger, in particular by supporting local associations that help people in difficulty. Since 2014, more than 1,500 kilograms of food have been collected from our employees in support of the Luxembourg Food Bank. This year, we also developed the “Solidarity salary-rounding program” as part of our Stop Hunger actions.
The goal? Give the possibility to our employees, on a voluntary basis, to round their salary to the lower euro and donate the remaining cents to the association Stëmm vun der Strooss. Small individual steps that allow fighting together against hunger at a bigger scale.
18 June: Sustainable Gastronomy Day
Combining gastronomy and sustainability is possible! Our goal: to respect the seasonality of products and promote short circuits by selecting more than a hundred producers in Luxembourg. Choosing the products we work with and offer our customers is a major challenge. More than 1,200 Luxembourgish products are listed in our procurement catalogue.