Analysis of Nespresso's Corporate Social Responsibility Report

This report analyzes Nespresso's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, focusing on their commitment to sustainable practices within the coffee industry. The report highlights Nespresso's efforts in sustainable aluminium sourcing for their coffee capsules, emphasizing their collaboration with Rio Tinto and the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI) to ensure responsible extraction and manufacturing. It discusses Nespresso's recycling programs, including their efforts to collect and recycle used capsules, and the challenges they face with consumer participation and the prevalence of non-recyclable pods from competitors. The report also examines Nespresso's broader approach to creating shared value, encompassing environmental and social considerations. Furthermore, the report critically evaluates Nespresso's recycling rates and marketing strategies, providing insights into the company's progress towards greater sustainability. The report references key academic sources and industry reports to support its analysis, offering a comprehensive overview of Nespresso's CSR performance and its implications for the coffee industry and the environment.

Running head: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
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Table of Contents
Answer 1..........................................................................................................................................2
Answer 2..........................................................................................................................................3

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Answer 1
Beverage major player Nespresso has revealed a new commitment to use only sustainable
sourced aluminium in its coffee capsules within the next one year. Such a strategy has initiated
after co-founding a new scheme to stimulate the sustainable extraction of the metal.
Nespresso is identified as a leader in the corporate drive for highly sustainable coffee
capsules, following to the launch of the world’s first capsule recycling system in Switzerland in
1991. According to Smithers (2017), by 2015 Nespresso successfully attainedaround 86% global
recycling power, through 14,000 capsule collection points. However, development from other
coffee brands, local authorities as well as recycling service providers has been considerably
slower, with around 95% of the pods on the market likely to be generated from a combination of
plastic and aluminium severely causing challenges to recycle, thus making Nespresso as a
valuable industry leader (Nespresso, 2019).
Reports of Niemuth et al. (2014) have noted that the company has collaborated with
aluminium extraction firm Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto is the only company which has received
certification as sustainable by the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI) in order to make an
official agreement towards ensuring that its capsule manufacturers exclusively employ certified
suppliers. However, for achieving ASI certification, Nespresso suppliers must accomplish a set
of requirements intended for biodiversity protection, showing reverence towards authorities and
rights of the Indigenous as well as carbon emissions. Furthermore, development towards these
requirements has been withuse of digital traceability mechanism further assuring that end-user
companies such as,Nespresso can easily access data at all levels of the supply chain.

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Recent times, several people has been facing issues with poor recycling rates. Nespresso,
being a vital part of the Nestle Empire has been strategically offering capacity to collect 100% of
their capsules for recycling. Such an aim is distinguished as a creditable goal on first reading and
certainly sufficient in order to obtain environmental credibility for the media. However,
Nespresso’srecycling scheme depends on consumers demarcating the capsules from other
household waste and returning them back to Nespressothroughunique doorstep collection or in
the course ofselected collection points.
Answer 2
Since 2010, significant part of Nestle Empire, Nespresso has been producing its fully-
recyclable aluminium capsules, similar to the sustainable products of L'Or plastic capsules.
However, Nespresso has changed its marketing strategy where its customers have to return them
to Nespresso to be processed at the company's personal recycling factory.Furthermore, with the
aim to encourage consumers to be highly environment friendly, the company offers free return
bags for the capsules which customers might purchase. Moreover, it is possible to discard used
capsules at a Nespresso boutique, at one of more than 7,500 collection points which includes
CollectPlus and Doddle locations or request a collection from own convenience. At this juncture,
Nespresso’s current recycling rate has been estimated to at 25%.Buxel, Esenduran and Griffin
(2015) have created a greater picture by involving services into environmental issues and further
shed light onvarious humanitarian as well as human rights initiatives. Nespresso further
hasengaged its services in order to attain a balance to the pod issue, and its sustainable
agriculturalenterprisespossiblywill accomplish that. On the other hand, reports of authors have

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claimed that currently the company comprises of around 56,000 farms registered in the program
and receives approximately 80% of its coffee from those farms.
However, Whelan and Fink (2016) have revealed that Nespresso pods are mostly
aluminium and can be further be recycled while many of pods of its market rivals are mixed
plastic which fail to be recycled in recent times. Moreover, using aluminium can only generate
productivity from a resource approach if the discarded aluminium is recycled. On the other hand,
such a technique can be viewed as highly carbon intensive way for consumers in order to extract
their coffee. Drawing relevance to these factors, Nespressomust proficiently refurbish the
recycling process to attain greater sustainability.

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References
Buxel, H., Esenduran, G., & Griffin, S. (2015). Strategic sustainability: Creating business
value with life cycle analysis. Business Horizons, 58(1), 109-122.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2014.09.004
Nespresso. (2019). NespressoRetrieved from:
https://www.nespresso.com/ca/en/order/capsules/vertuo
Niemuth, S., Hamann, L., Luschnat, K., Smolarz, P., &Golombek, S. (2014). CSR in the
coffee industry: Sustainability issues at Nestlé-Nespresso and Starbucks. Journal of
European Management & Public Affairs Studies, 2(1), 31-36. Retrieved from
http://194.95.44.177/index.php/Jempas/article/viewFile/43/61
Smithers, R. (2017). Nespresso bid to recycle coffee pods. Retrieved from:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/29/recycle-nespresso-coffee-
pods-london
Whelan, T., & Fink, C. (2016). The comprehensive business case for sustainability. Harvard
Business Review, 21, 2012. Retrieved from
https://everestenergy.nl/new/wp-content/uploads/HBR-Article-The-comprehensive-
business-case-for-sustainability.pdf