Honeybear Brands, a grower, marketer and developer of premium conventional and organic apples, pears and cherries, says it has released its new 2024 sustainability report, highlighting four years of progress toward its environmental goals.
In this report, Honeybear Brands, which collaborates with the Sustainable Food Group, showcases its sustainability goals across pollinator health, packaging, food loss and waste, and climate and energy, according to a news release.
This report benchmarks the company’s progress from its original 2019 report. Honeybear Brands’ annual reporting highlights five- and 10-year targets toward its long-term strategy.
Kristi Harris, brand manager with Honeybear Brands, says sustainability “is not going away,” and it’s something younger consumers pay close attention to when it comes to spending.
“With especially younger consumers, we’re seeing consumer insights tell us that it is something that’s of great importance to them, and that impacts some of the decisions of what they do with their money,” she says.
Harris says a great success within Honeybear’s sustainability efforts is its Adopt an Acre program, in which the company partners with retailers to establish and maintain pollinator habits in orchards.
“One in three bites of food is dependent on pollinators, and apples are 100% dependent on pollinators,” she says. “We have this circular opportunity to take a portion of apple sales during a given time frame and develop pollinator habitat right alongside the orchards where the apples are coming from.”
And she says it’s a great opportunity for retailers to promote both the importance of pollinators during apple season as well as discuss some of the threats that pollinators face. Honeybear also offers custom signage, consumer education materials and co-branded messaging to participating retailers.
Harris says another point of note is Honeybear’s efforts in food waste, thought she says there’s plenty of opportunity for growth.
“We do everything we can to utilize every single bit of saleable, usable products,” she says. “We have a really great product that does have a longer shelf life than a lot of other commodities.”
In the five years that Honeybear has been tracking its sustainability efforts through the Sustainable Food Group, it’s helped Honeybear better answer retailers’ questions about Honeybear’s sustainability efforts, Harris says.
“We’ve got a really nice basis; we’re ahead of the game there to have these goals that definitely align with what the retailers are asking us,” she says.
In the report — available at honeybearbrands.com/sustainability — Honeybear also details its increased use of renewable energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the reduction and elimination of non-recyclable packaging, and more.
