Cocoa’s impact on the environment

Cocoa plays a major role in Valrhona’s carbon footprint, so our ambition is to reduce its impact via a sourcing strategy.

Calculating cocoa's environmental impact: the exemple of Madagascar

In 2021, in partnership with the NGO Nitidae, we conducted a study in Madagascar to calculate how many emissions our cocoa was responsible for from the producer’s plot to the chocolate factory (in terms of kilograms of CO2  per kilogram of cocoa). When we took into account all the emissions and practices covered by our partner Millot, the study showed that 0.57kg of CO2  eq. are emitted for every kilogram of cocoa, a figure forty times smaller than initially expected.

Zero carbon emissions from deforestation

Our emissions were lower than expected because we have been able to evaluate local deforestation rates over the last 20 years with a great degree of precision. Studies of satellite images of our cocoa plots revealed that no cocoa was planted on a previously forested area; emissions linked to tree felling by our Madagascan partner are therefore zero.

Extending work to calculate cocoa's environmental impact across every origin

These encouraging results have compelled us to use same method in all Valrhona’s producer countries. We will use 2023 to finalize emission calculations for all our cocoa origins.

In 2022, data about CO2  emissions were collected for 54% of the cocoa Valrhona sourced.

Nans Mouret, Sourcer