Texan by Nature is excited to recognize Sysco as a 2022 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.

Honoree Industry and Size: Food and Beverage –  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 food service and hospitality industries. With more than 71,000 associates, the company operates over 333 distribution facilities worldwide and serves more than 700,000 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 food service distribution, Sysco is committed to acting ethically and responsibly to service our customers while creating positive change in our organization, the environment, and the communities we serve – a commitment that ultimately enhances the value of our business. Our Mission, Identity, and Values reflect our broader ambition and great impact on the world. We are always improving and setting the standard of excellence for our industry and defining the future of our space.

Our Purpose – connecting the world to share food and care for one another – 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 sustainability initiatives have grown and accelerated to encompass all the ways we can deliver improved environmental, social, and governance performance. Sysco’s approach to sustainability is anchored around People, Products, and Planet. We are committed to caring for people, sourcing products responsibly, and protecting the planet. Within this framework, we have prioritized our sustainability efforts and focus on issues that most closely touch our operations and where we believe we can drive the biggest impact.

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

Sysco’s business strategy, Recipe for Growth, is grounded in our Purpose, fueling our transformation to enable us to grow 1.5x 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 sustainability efforts play a vital role in each of these pillars to further differentiate Sysco, create a sustainable competitive advantage and make a positive impact in the world. Sysco is proud to be leading our industry to a sustainable future.

What are Sysco’s short and long-term goals as they relate to conservation and sustainability?
Sysco’s sustainability priorities focus on three pillars: People, Product, and Planet. Within each pillar, we have specific, short and long-term goals to guide our actions. Click here to see our 2025 goals.

In November 2021, we set a new climate goal to reduce emissions across our operations by 27.5% by 2030. We’ll do this by adding nearly 2,500 electric trucks to our U.S. fleet and sourcing 100% renewable electricity for our global operations. We are also leveraging our scale to work with our supplier partners on their climate commitments because we know that together we can do more to address the climate challenge.

Some of our other 2025 goals that relate to conservation and sustainability include:

• Increasing responsibly sourced commodities 
• Diverting 90% of operations and food waste from landfills
• Expanding the Sysco Sustainable Agriculture program to include ten fresh crops

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 Sustainability efforts, reporting directly to Kevin Hourican, Sysco’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Neil has a team dedicated to driving Sysco’s sustainability strategy globally. Sysco’s Board also includes a committee that provides input on the sustainability strategy and monitors progress against 2025 goals and objectives. 

“It is an honor to be recognized by the TxN 20 for Sysco’s conservation and sustainability efforts. As the global leader in food service distribution, we have the responsibility and unique opportunity to set the standard and pave the way for our 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 sustainability and conservation.”

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

Our associates value giving back to their communities and living our Purpose – connecting the world to share food and care for one another. We launched our Sysco Gives Back Volunteer Recognition Program to celebrate and recognize associates who donate their valuable time to charitable organizations. We have a tool for associates to enter their volunteer hours, which helps us track efforts as we work to achieve our Global Good Goal of providing $500 million of good into our communities by 2025. Within the tool, associates can select what their volunteer efforts were related to such as cleaning up local parks, streams, or volunteering at community gardens.

We also work closely with suppliers, customers, and our operations teams on diverting food to donation sites and other outlets in an effort to provide food to those in need and avoid sending waste to landfills. We believe that waste represents a critical area for collaboration and incremental progress. 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 are impactful, locally driven, and scalable.

What conservation and sustainability programs and projects does Sysco lead and participate in?
We are proud to have been the first company in our industry to commit to a science-based target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. By 2030, we aim to reduce our impact on the planet by reducing direct emissions (Scope 1 and 2) in our operations by 27.5%. To reach our climate goal, we have plans to add nearly 2,500 electric trucks to our U.S. fleet and source 100% renewable electricity for our global operations by 2030. In May 2022, we announced our commitment to purchase nearly 800 electric trucks from Daimler Truck North America. We also piloted an electric refrigerated trailer, which we believe will ultimately result in our ability to make deliveries in fully electric vehicles. 

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 – one of America’s most important beef-producing regions.  NFWF recently announced ten projects in the five Southern Plains States – Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Texas – were awarded $2.5 million to invest in community-led sustainable grazing practices and wildlife habitat. The grants were awarded through the Southern Plains Grassland Program, where conservation experts will work alongside interested ranchers to improve or restore grasslands through voluntary and customized sustainable grazing management practices.

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. 

As the only foodservice distribution company with a dedicated sustainable agriculture program, we are proud of the work we do in the field with growers and suppliers. The Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Program was launched in 2004 to encourage the responsible use of pesticide and nutrient inputs. Today, the IPM Program has expanded to also focus on reducing waste, conserving energy and water, and collaborating with growers and suppliers to apply IPM practices throughout the farms. As of the end of FY2021, our IPM program involved 135 processing locations and 15,605 growers of agricultural products worldwide. Our current Sustainable Agriculture Program for canned and frozen fruits and vegetables continues to produce tremendous results. As part of our 2025 sustainability goals, we are expanding the Sustainable Agriculture Program to include ten fresh crops.

How do you see the future of conservation and sustainability evolving, and what role will your 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 proud to be leading our industry to a sustainable future and will continue progressing our 2025 goals to make a meaningful and lasting impact. 

Sysco is making investments in the business to ensure we are making meaningful progress towards our sustainability goals. We are currently investing in the areas of renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean transportation, waste reduction, and responsible product sourcing in order to lower our carbon footprint.

Sysco recently announced its intent to purchase up to 800 electric tractors from Daimler Truck North America (DTNA) by 2026. This investment shows our commitment to sustainability and growing responsibly and will ultimately help us meet our goal of reducing our direct carbon emissions by 27.5% by 2030. Click here to read the full press release.

Sysco has also 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. In April 2022, ten projects in the five Southern Plains States – Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Texas – were awarded $2.5 million to invest in community-led sustainable grazing practices and wildlife habitats. Click here to read the full press release.

As the global leader in food service distribution, we understand it is our responsibility to operate our company in a sustainable manner.  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 in our sustainability report each year.

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.  One example is climate change. It’s too big for any one company to tackle alone, which is why we are working together with our suppliers, customers, and other organizations to help address it.

Why is Texas an important home or base of operations for Sysco?
Sysco’s founder John Baugh was a food service 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 food service 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 over 50 years ago, the Sysco family has grown to over 71,000 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.