Approach

We depend on land, water and energy to grow the ingredients, raise the animals and run our facilities to produce our food products.

Accordingly, environmental stewardship is a core value of Tyson Foods’ business philosophy and commitment to sustainability. We believe protecting the environment and conserving natural resources is essential for maintaining clean air, water and land.

Water Conservation

Between irrigation in fields and processing, cooking and cleaning in our facilities, water is a critical natural resource to our business.

Tyson Foods has prioritized water efficiency in production facilities, with a target of reducing our water use intensity. While these changes are making an impact, our processing facilities are responsible for only a small portion of our total water consumption. To broaden our water stewardship efforts, Tyson Foods worked with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to assess water risk and develop a water stewardship strategy. The water risk assessment focused on exposure to water stress across our processing facilities, locations where we source animals and locations where we source animal feed.

Sustainably feeding the world means reducing our carbon footprint.

We use energy in our everyday operations for powering processing equipment; cooking, chilling and freezing product; transporting product to distribution centers and customers; and more. The main types of energy we use in our operations include electricity, fossil fuels and gas.

Tyson Foods is committed to bold reduction of our carbon footprint. We are working toward a “30 by 30” target to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 30% by 2030 against a 2016 baseline year. This target is designed to meet the criteria of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

Waste Reduction

Our environmental management experts are continuously exploring innovations in packaging and waste diversion to reduce operational waste output, increase our recycling footprint and reuse waste to add value to products or create new sources of energy.

Packaging

Our packaging strategy aligns with the five “Rs”- Remove, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Renew - and is guided by the recommended packaging metrics and definitions set forth by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) and the Global Packaging Project. The packaging design process prioritizes increasing the use of recyclable and renewable materials, as well as minimizing packaging where possible. At the same time, our packaging must be durable enough to endure handling through receipt, inventory, packing use, distribution, point of sale, consumer use and disposal, as well as meeting our high standards for food compatibility and safety. We stay abreast of innovations in packaging technology and ways to source renewable packaging materials.