Innovation for Growth

As part of our Dole Promise towards zero fruit loss and reduced landfills necessary for carbon neutrality, Dole Sunshine Company has partnered with social enterprise Musa Fabric to turn banana waste into fibres of purpose through a partnership creating fashion products, woven by marginalized communities. We believe that by putting the prosperity of people and the planet at the heart of everything we do, the sun shines brighter for us all.

In Sri Lanka, we’ve removed herbicides from our weed control thanks to a collaborative project with our workers. Small teams have been assigned ten hectares of land each and trained in natural weed control, and in return they receive a salary supplement. This ecological solution means less soil erosion, more soil biodiversity, better soil quality and with that more nutritious fruit.

We are showing our love for the land by supporting the National Greening Program in the Philippines. In 2020, we planted 181,666 trees, including 60,949 bamboo plants, and adopted and nurtured rivers, creeks and forests close to our farms too.

We’ve been looking at inventive ways to create energy from our food waste for many years. One example is using rice hulls. Since 2012, we’ve reduced our local greenhouse gas emissions in the Philippines by 240,000 tCO2e, by generating renewable biomass energy from rice hulls. In doing this, we’ve saved 77 million liters of fossil fuel that would have otherwise been needed.

By the end of 2021, we’ll be generating 7.9 MWp of our own renewable energy (at maximum capacity) and preventing fruit waste from going into landfill at the same time. That’s because we’re building two large biogas plants that will be powered by the waste fruit from our local canneries and plantation, with the aim of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 100,000 tCO2e every year.

Working with our retailers, we are ensuring truck food and beverage shipments are not unnecessarily light. We estimate that this initiative is saving 400,000 miles per year from our US supply chain and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 462 tCO2e at the same time.