Albert Heijn
Our food system is the largest cause of nature loss worldwide. Rainforests are being cleared to make way for fields full of cattle and soy intended for animal feed. The way we produce and consume our food is unsustainable. We must switch to a food system that is in balance with nature. That is why WWF and Albert Heijn have been working together since July 1, 2022. Together, we aim to halve the footprint of the Dutch food system by 2030. We hope that all supermarkets in our country will adopt this strategy eventually.
United for sustainable food
What we do
WWF and AH share a mission to make sustainably produced, healthy and affordable food available to everyone, which is not only good for nature, but also for consumers' health and wallets.
To achieve this, we need a change to the entire production chain, from farm to fork. As the largest supermarket in our country, Albert Heijn has influence on this chain. And with WWF's knowledge about the effect of food production on nature, we can change the system from within.
What we hope to achieve
In October 2024, we published an approach outlining the goals for 2030: the WWF-NL Basket. This science-based methodology focuses on seven themes with a major impact on the environment in the food sector: climate, food waste, packaging, deforestation and land conversion, consumption patterns, agriculture and fish. The approach focuses on the long term and can also be used by all supermarkets in the Netherlands. Part of the Basket is a monitoring system that supermarkets can use to measure progress on these themes.
Kirsten Schuijt, former director of WWF-NL
"Consumers must be able to count on the fact that the groceries in their shopping trolleys were not produced at the expense of nature. That's why I'm so happy that Albert Heijn is sticking its neck out to halve the ecological impact of products. After all, without nature, we have no food.
We are hoping that more parties in the Netherlands will join us, because we can only make the transition to a sustainable food system that is in balance with nature by working together."