Texan by Nature is excited to recognize Sysco as a 2021 TxN 20 honoree for their leadership in conservation and sustainability. Sysco’s commitment to conservation, their projects, programs, best practices, and lessons learned are an example and inspiration for us all. 

Sysco was recognized as a 2020 TxN 20 honoree as well, read the 2020 write-up.

Honoree Industry and Size: Food, Beverage, and Grocery – Enterprise

Company Overview:

Sysco is the global leader in selling, marketing, and distributing food products to restaurants, healthcare, educational facilities, lodging establishments, and other customers who prepare meals away from home. Our family of products also includes equipment and supplies for the foodservice and hospitality industries. With more than 58,000 associates, the company operates over 340 distribution facilities worldwide and serves more than 650,000 customer locations. In Texas, Sysco has over 5,800 associates and 17 facilities.

What is Sysco’s conservation and sustainability mission and why is it important to your culture?

As the global leader in foodservice distribution, we recognize our position comes with great responsibility to build stronger communities and a healthier environment. Our organization is committed to acting ethically and responsibly to service our customers while producing positive, lasting change.

Earlier this year, we unveiled our new Purpose – connecting the world to share food and care for one another. This is the foundation for every goal we set, a decision we make, and action that we take.

Sysco has been working on sustainability efforts for several decades. Over the years, our corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives have grown and accelerated to encompass all the ways we can deliver improved environmental, social, and governance performance. Sysco’s CSR priorities and initiatives are anchored in three pillars — People, Products, and Planet. We are committed to caring for people, sourcing products responsibly, and respecting the planet. Within this framework, we have prioritized our sustainability efforts and focus on issues that most closely touch our operations and drive the biggest impact. 

How is conservation and sustainability a part of Sysco’s business strategy?

Sysco’s business strategy is grounded in our Purpose, fueling our transformation to enable us to grow 1.5 times faster than the industry by leveraging five strategic pillars:

• Digital: Enriching the customer experience through personalized digital tools.
• Products and Solutions: Offering customer-focused marketing and merchandising solutions to increase sales. 
• Supply Chain: Serving customers efficiently and consistently with the products they need, when and how they need them. 
• Customer Teams: Team based selling that leverages Sysco’s expertise in specialty categories with a focus on important cuisine segments.
• Future Horizon: Cultivating new channels, segments, and capabilities, while being responsible stewards of the company and the planet and funding the investments through cost-out efforts.

Sysco’s corporate social responsibility efforts play a vital role in each of these pillars from reducing our carbon footprint in our supply chain to ensuring our products are responsibly sourced.

What are Sysco’s short and long-term goals as they relate to conservation and sustainability?

Sysco’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) priorities are based on three pillars: People, Product, and Planet. Within each pillar we have specific, short and long-term goals to guide our actions. 

In Fiscal Year 2020, we reevaluated our CSR goals based on the progress we made since setting them in 2018. The reevaluation included areas that have become more critically important and the expansion of the goals to include additional Sysco companies and geographies. As a result, some of our updated 2025 goals that relate to conservation and sustainability include:

• Established responsible sourcing guidelines for four key commodities: beef, soy, paper and coffee with commitments already in place for palm oil and seafood. 
• Diverting 90% of operations and food waste from landfills
• Expanding the Sysco Sustainable Agriculture program to include five fresh crops
• 100% compliance to Sysco’s Animal Welfare Policy
• 20% of fleet vehicles to be powered by alternative fuels
• Sourcing 20% of electricity from alternative sources

“It is an honor to be recognized by the TxN 20 for Sysco’s conservation and sustainability efforts. As the global leader in foodservice distribution, we have the opportunity and responsibility to set the standard and pave the way for the industry to make a real difference in building a sustainable future. Sysco continues to innovate and evolve to find new solutions to preserve and protect the environment for future generations. I am proud of the progress we have made and look forward to continuing to share our efforts in conservation and sustainability.”

– Neil Russell, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer

Who at Sysco is leading your conservation and sustainability efforts and what are some examples of employee engagement in conservation and sustainability at your company?

Neil Russell, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer, leads Sysco’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts, reporting directly to Kevin Hourican, Sysco’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Neil has a team dedicated to driving Sysco’s CSR agenda globally. Sysco’s Board also includes a CSR Committee that provides input on the CSR strategy and monitors progress against CSR goals and objectives. 

Additionally, Sysco’s associates, facility operations, and supplier partnerships are integral to the success of our CSR efforts.  

Our associates value opportunities to give back to their communities, whether that is through hands-on or skills-based pro bono activities. Sysco is beginning to track the time spent on these volunteer activities to drive engagement and impact at the same time. 

We also work closely with suppliers, customers, and our operations teams on diverting food to donation sites and other outlets in efforts to provide food to those in need and avoid sending waste to landfills. In fiscal year 2020, we donated 39 million meals. We also diverted 69% of operations and food waste from landfills. 

We believe that waste represents a critical area for collaboration and incremental progress. With recycling infrastructure unevenly available and disparately managed around the world, our focus is on establishing best practices internally on how to best manage our organic waste. We spent much of the past year piloting several approaches on how to manage our organic waste, including meal donations, livestock feed and biofuel production, to understand what we can implement across our locations that is impactful, locally driven, and scalable. 

What conservation and sustainability programs and projects does Sysco lead and participate in?

In April 2021, Sysco teamed up with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and Cargill to support ranchers in implementing the largest sustainable grazing effort in the Southern Great Plains (Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas) – one of America’s most important beef-producing regions. Through the Southern Plains Grassland Program, conservation experts will work alongside interested ranchers to improve grasslands through voluntary and customized sustainable grazing management practices. The priorities, strategies, and goals of this program are to:

• Improve grassland health and resilience through improved grazing practices
• Control of invasive species that reduce available forage for livestock and habitat for wildlife
• Restore formerly converted lands back to grassland
• Protect existing high-quality grassland parcels
• Invest in community level grassland collaborative conservation efforts

Explore innovations in conservation, including:

• Grass banks and other community cooperative grazing arrangements
• Innovations in fencing, water delivery and recreation.

Sysco has also been working with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) since 2009 to improve outcomes on the water and transition our planet’s seafood production to more sustainable, responsible, and traceable sources – preserving seafood resources for future generations. In January 2021, Sysco announced the expansion of its sustainable seafood program to further improve sourcing, advance traceability, address deforestation, and protect endangered species. Learn more about our seafood sustainability commitments.

With one of the largest refrigerated private truck fleets in the country, Sysco is committed to leading the future of sustainable food distribution. In alignment with our corporate social responsibility goals and ongoing efforts to reduce our carbon footprint, Sysco plans to supplement its delivery fleet with electric vehicles. Last year we announced that we were testing out an all-electric freightliner truck in this news release. It’s a significant undertaking but also a significant opportunity to lead the foodservice industry and be a part of the global transition to a low carbon economy. Our teams are working hard on this challenge and we completed the pilot in late February at our San Francisco location. Watch this video to learn more about the pilot and future at Sysco:

Additionally, Sysco’s Sustainable Agriculture program involves 125 processing plants and more than 11,000 growers covering over 1.3 million acres devoted to Sysco Brand agricultural products worldwide. Our Sustainable Agriculture program encourages limiting pesticide use and nutrient inputs to only those needed for a successful crop. The initiative also promotes waste reduction through recycling and the conservation of energy and water in farming, processing, and distribution.  By choosing Sysco Brand canned and frozen fruits & vegetables, Sysco customers aren’t only serving great meals today – they’re serving a commitment to a more sustainable future. 

How do you see the future of conservation and sustainability evolving, and what role will Sysco play in that progress?

As the future of conservation continues to evolve, it is critical that organizations take a proactive approach to caring and protecting our planet and resources for future generations. Sysco is ready to rise to the challenge and will continue progressing our 2025 corporate social responsibility goals to create a meaningful and lasting impact. 

Whether it’s feeding the hungry in our communities, doing more to accelerate our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, taking action to make agriculture more sustainable, or reducing our carbon footprint by improving our supply chain, Sysco is proud to be leading the change. 

How does your company quantify investment and return on conservation and sustainability?

As the global leader in foodservice distribution we understand it is our responsibility and our purpose to operate our company in a sustainable manner.  We have a sustainability strategy that focuses on three pillars: People, Product and Planet.  These pillars allow us to structure and focus our efforts in areas where we believe we can make the most impact.  We do try to understand the investment and return of our efforts. For certain programs, we set program-specific environmental and/or social outcome measures. However, our main focus is on ensuring that we are using our size and scale for good.  We are committed to reporting progress on the goals we have publicized.

What is the one lesson that Sysco has learned from your conservation and sustainability efforts that others can take back and think about applying within their own space?

One lesson we have learned is the importance of partnerships and collaboration with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s), suppliers, and our internal teams. There are often dependencies across the supply chain to ensure the success of a program or sustainability effort. Therefore, it is essential to make sure everyone is aligned and working towards the same goal. 

Why is Texas an important home or base of operations for Sysco?

Sysco’s founder John Baugh was a foodservice professional from the start, getting his first job at the local A&P in his hometown of Waco, Texas. In 1946, he and his wife, Eula Mae, founded Zero Foods to distribute frozen foods to restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, fast food stores, and grocery chains. In 1969, Baugh and a group of other foodservice companies started Sysco and went public in 1970. There were less than 15 people working at Sysco’s corporate headquarters, originally located in downtown Houston, in 1970. Since our company started 50 years ago, the Sysco family has grown to over 58,000 associates who join together in Sysco’s shared values – Rooted in Integrity, Committed to Inclusion, Drive Together, Define Excellence, Grow Responsibly – across the globe to serve our customers while making a difference in the communities we serve.  

Learn more about Sysco’s conservation and sustainability efforts here.

Definitions:

Carbon footprint: the amount of greenhouse gases and specifically carbon dioxide emitted by something (such as a person’s activities or a product’s manufacture and transport) during a given period