Verifying Amazon’s Climate Pledge Friendly Programme

Objectives

Through the support of Meat and Poultry Ontario’s Canadian Agricultural Partnership Program, Yorkshire Valley Farms (YVF) was looking to define their organizational purpose, vision, and develop a purpose-driven growth strategy to achieve their sustainability and circularity goals.

Project

Services

Through alignment around their Purpose to “make food matter more” and Vision “to be part of a stable, fair, and thriving food system”, YVF has achieved the following:

• Completed two surveys of an Organization Health Index so that employees could feel heard and valued as demonstrated by improvements in engagement scores.
• Created a Director of Corporate Culture role, as the organization began to recognize the importance of human capital in their circularity and sustainability strategy.
• Began process to introduce employee benefits such as parental leave and a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) program.
• Empowered employees to be part of the operational assessment work with our partners at Enviro-Stewards.
• Became more circular in the following areas: packaging, water usage, and waste.

Impacts

• Created a goal to achieve a 10% reduction in freshwater usage, and made changes to packaging to improve recycling compatibility.
• Organizational Health Index (OHI) score report from September 2021 to 2022 increased by 0.22 points, a 5.6% improvement, allowing Yorkshire Valley Farms to progress in its goals to achieve a regenerative culture.
• Through employee empowerment, effective communication, and additional investment made in smart meter technology, the team was able to take ownership and troubleshoot a spike in water consumption, leading to an 18% reduction by the next month in freshwater usage.
• Purpose-driven Instagram creative received 3.4x more engagement than a similar creative with functional messaging (as measured by ad clicks).

These achievements have resulted in enhanced employee enrollment and engagement, a refined business strategy through the lens of circularity, and engaged customers through purpose-driven communications.