Unilever fails reporting cocoa sustainability

Easter is coming soon. The Chocolate Scorecard informs your choice of sustainable chocolate eggs. It ranks the good, the bad and the ugly payers in cocoa industry. The Scorecard evaluates the 56 producers responsible for 95% of the world's chocolate on the basis of deforestation and climate, traceability, labor rights, and sustainable farming practices. The card presents scores by colored eggs: green for good, yellow for improving, orange for trying, and red stands for "needs to catch up to the rest of the industry".

This year Dutch company Original Beans came out on top with a good egg in every category, closely followed by Tony's Chocolonely, producers of the world’s first "slavery free" chocolate bars 20 years ago. Unilever (Magnum ice cream) - one of the ugly players - was awarded a broken egg for failing to take part in this year’s cocoa sustainability survey at all. The Chocolate Scorecard's team comments "Consumers and investors have a right to be informed about the conditions under which chocolate is produced." However, most major chocolate companies have commitments to source more sustainable cocoa. In fact, many of them have plans to have 100% certified cocoa in their supply chain in some years.

Although this is an important step in the right direction, certification programs alone are not enough to solve the underlying issues that contribute to child labor in cocoa, including farmer poverty and a lack of infrastructure. On top of a child labor problem, the cocoa industry has a huge negative impact on forests. In the Ivory Coast and Ghana, 90% of their forests have been lost and the cocoa industry is a big driver of that deforestation. Make your chocolate purchase count!

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