PMA offers sustainability assessment tools

The Produce Marketing Association is offering sustainability tools for members of PMA and the United Fresh Produce Association.

In late August, PMA announced that the sustainability assessment tool and the sustainability communication guide were available for download at bit.ly/PMA-tools. 

“These tools have been created in partnership with the industry exclusively for members to aid in the creation of a compelling and comprehensive sustainability story,” PMA said on its website.

PMA’s Sustainability Story Assessment Tool is designed to help organizations uncover, identify and reflect on their practices in order to better share their sustainability story, according to PMA’s website. The Sustainability Story Communications Guide, PMA said, is a collection of exercises and resources to help a company understand their audiences for their sustainability story, create messaging salient to these audiences and ultimately build a holistic communications strategy to deliver the organization’s sustainability story.

Ed Treacy, vice president of supply chain and traceability, and Siobhan May, director of communications and public relations, spoke about the tools during a PMA Virtual Town Hall in late August.

“Sustainability is a key component to accomplish our collective goal of growing a healthier world,” Treacy said. PMA said the association focused on inspiring industry members to implement practices that benefit the planet and the people on it profitably. 

With the assistance of the group’s volunteer sustainability committee, PMA has prioritized seven areas within sustainability:

• Packaging and recycling;
• Food loss and food waste;
• Soil health;
• Social responsibility, primarily through the promotion of the ethical charter on responsible labor practices;
• Energy;
• Water; and 
• Carbon and greenhouse gas reduction.

PMA has created 10 case studies highlighting PMA member initiatives in those seven areas of focus, Treacy said, and three more case studies are under development.

In addition to the case studies, PMA has hosted web seminars looking at those seven areas of focus, and those virtual meetings are available for playback on demand, he said.

One area of challenge for the industry, Treacy said, is choosing an appropriate audit scheme. Treacy said PMA is creating an executive summary of the top 60 or so audit schemes relative to the produce industry. That summary, he said, is designed to assist companies in choosing which audit scheme best matches their needs. That document will only be available to PMA and United Fresh members, he said.

PMA also has conducted research on sustainability, Treacy said.

“Our research has shown us that consumers are looking to support brands in organizations whose goals and values align with their own,” he said. “We have also learned that even though we are part of one of the most sustainable industries, we collectively do not do a good job in identifying and communicating our successes related to sustainability.”

While there are some exceptions, Treacy said many produce companies don’t do a great job in communicating their sustainability plans and actions.

The new tools from PMA can help to change that reality, Treacy said.

Tool design

Treacy said May was the “creative genius” behind the tools.
May said the tools were developed with the help of industry volunteers.

“Sustainability is a huge area of impact, opportunity and also challenges,” she said. “So, it’s important to identify the question that we wanted to answer specifically, or the problem that we wanted to solve with these tools.”

Ultimately, the tools will help members tell their sustainability stories, May said.

Telling a story first requires identifying what the message is, and then figuring how to communicate that message.
The two standalone tools look at those questions.

The assessment tool is meant to help members consider and capture all of the ways they’re contributing to sustainability. 

The second tool is the communications guide, she said. There is more than one way to tell a story, and May said the goal for the communications tool isn’t necessarily to say, “here’s a script of how to tell your sustainability story.” Rather, she said it is about how the tool can help people to determine what are the components of the story that would be valuable to particular audiences, and who are the audiences that their company wants to connect with. 

“It’s really about identifying the ways that we want to help to develop a compelling and meaningful story, and also how to choose the correct outputs that are going to connect best with those outcomes for the audiences,” she said.

While both of the tools can be used on their own, May said the communications tool specifically was designed to follow the assessment tool.

May said the assessment tool was designed to help members tell their sustainability story.

“With the assessment tool, we were looking to help members answer the question,” she said, though she also said every organization will have a different answer.

“But we know that there’s going to be some steps that every organization can take that can help them get to those answers or get them to the resources that can inform their story,” she said. 

May said the assessment tool is about 15 pages long and guides members through a variety of reflective questions to help them uncover and capture all of the necessary ingredients.

“One of the things that we recognize is that while there’s a good understanding around environmental sustainability practices, there may be less understanding about the sustainability practices that impact people,” May said. 

The ethical charter, she said, is one such way that organizations can engage in within that area of sustainability.

May said there are three points of value related to the assessment tool:

• The tool helps members reflect on a company-wide view of sustainability efforts, and it helps companies identify partners and resources that will be valuable and sharing your sustainability story.
• The tool creates a common language and provides a holistic standard for how to think about everything that could constitute sustainability. “This isn’t meant to replace anything that people are currently doing, but it does provide a great starting vocabulary for those who are just starting to talk about their sustainability work with external audiences.”
• The assessment tool can be used to reflect on what a company has already done, but can also be a planning tool to consider places in which the company is starting to or planning to do sustainability work.

“It is going to be a tool that will help you align or capture the work that you’re doing within a shared language, and it provides an example of a global framework on sustainability,” May said. 

Telling the sustainability story

The United Nations sustainable development goals are the tool’s standard language to help communicate sustainability, May said.

“When we start thinking about communicating to audiences, it’s great to be able to have a standard language that we can pull from,” she said.

“Not every single area of the 17 United Nation goals will be relevant to your business, and that’s OK. But many of these are, and some of these areas that will be very, very relevant to our industry.”

The tools can be a great benchmarking tool for each of the tactics included in the assessment, May said.

“Consider this tool as a planning tool, as opposed to just a form to fill out; it can really help your whole team be on the same page about the work that you’re doing, and why it’s so important.”

In terms of communications, May said it is important to highlight what topics the consumer audience is most interested in.
“If you are looking at beginning that story, we wanted to really focus on providing a starting point for those who don’t maybe have the resources dedicated to this area already, and haven’t yet started talking about their sustainability work,” she said.
Another part of the tool is to help marketers choose the right communication tools.

“In this tool, we also introduce a few different exercises that help you and your team think about communications approaches; you will be prompted to think about your intended audiences, what motivates them, and what you want them to think or do with the information you’re provided,” she said.

“We know that consumers are starting to think more and more about the sustainability practices of the companies that they purchase from or they engage with,” she said. 

“Think about your audiences and what will motivate them.”
Companies must focus on an effective storytelling campaign, as opposed to simply pushing messages out, she said.