We seek to provide ecologically and socially friendly, premium natural health solutions with minimal impact on the ecosystem and without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

We will strive to achieve this through selective and efficient use of resources and energy in entirety be it via supply, production or consumption.

Existing Initiatives:

Social Responsibility

Support an array of community initiatives including:

• Health awareness
• Vegetarian and vegan societies
• Athlete sponsorship
• Support Community Based Activist Groups
• Support eco-friendly socially responsible events and partners that promote environmental sustainability. These include green festivals, Vegan/vegetarian events, media partners (such as Alive and VegNews Magazine,) with similar values etc…
• Strive to heighten awareness and educate people on the nutritional benefits of raw, organic plant based whole foods.
• Employee initiatives including education allowance, smoothie & salad meal plan, free health product plan, fitness membership allowance…

Sustainability:

• Efficiently grown ingredients
  • Vega products are derived from plant based ingredients that require far fewer resources (energy, water etc…) to produce than animal and synthetic based products. We are currently conducting a study to measure the reduced impact of our products on the environment.
• Nutrient dense ingredients
  • Plant based sources of protein like hemp and chlorella provide more protein per ounce than animal sources providing greater nourishment from far less land mass.
• Organic ingredients
  • helps preserve air and soil quality
  • reduces the amount of energy required to grow the food and
  • results in foods that are free of toxic chemicals or genetic modification.
• Raw, undenatured ingredients
  • Products are ready to eat in their raw state and thus require less processing and thus energy to produce and prepare.
• Source ingredients as local as possible
  • Use of recyclable materials
  • use of more environmentally friendly plastics and paper in packaging and promo items,
  • Use of bio friendly alternative materials such as corn based cups for demoing in place of plastic/paper.
• New eco-friendly designed facility
• Recycling program
• Education
  • We strive to heighten awareness of environmentally friendly nature of organic, raw, plant based whole foods through PR initiatives, trade shows, articles, literature etc
• Fair Labour Practice
  • Our manufacturers are all based in Canada and follow the Canadian labour standards.
  • We perform regular visits to our manufacturers.
  • Ensuring fair labour principles – fair pricing, fair wages, and good working conditions – is a particular focus when sourcing ingredients from other countries, such as Peru, China, Indonesia, and the Phillipines.

New initiatives:

Environmental footprint reporting

As a leader in the health industry we aspire to set an example that it is possible to follow socially responsible, sustainable practices and be a profitable and successful organization. We are committed sustainable practices backed by trusted scientific based certification. As such we have taken necessary steps by investing in the expertise of Conscious Brands (www.consciousbrands.com), the leading organic food company sustainability consultancy in Systems Thinking, The Natural Step and Carbon Labels, to help us define and further reduce our impact as an organization. This two year project will manifest itself in the following three phases:

Phase 1 -Carbon labeling of our products

This initial phase provides us with a quantitative value we can place on our label to to indicate the amount of CO2 emissions generated as a result of producing and consuming Vega products. It expresses the total output of carbon emissions, and thus environmental impact, connected with the product’s lifecycle – from seed, to store, to final disposal of the packaging. This detailed process map of inputs and outputs identifies weakness and provides a starting point from which we can strive for continuous improvement in our products’ environmental footprint through increased efficiency and reduction in emissions (such as over-shipping, manufacturing inefficiencies, etc…). To complete our carbon-label Conscious Brands has done a full life-cycle assessment and look at all the key stages. This includes:

• Drawing a map of the key stages in the supply chain – from ingredient production, to getting product on the shelves, to disposing of the package.
• Looking at the energy consumption directly involved in each of these stages, and converting this into the resulting amount of carbon emissions.
• Add up the carbon emissions from each of these stages to get the calculated value.
• Come up with a final carbon footprint (and put that onto the product as a carbon-label)

All Conscious Brands Life-cycle assessment processes are third party verified and comply with the ISO 14064, a best practices environmental standard, (www.csa.ca).

Results

The results thus far have been impressive to say the least. When comparing the greenhouse gas impact of Vega One with a “typical breakfast” and a “traditional breakfast” we see the following:

A serving of Vega leaves a tiny Carbon Footprint* and provides many times the nutrition with 10 X less emissions than the typical light breakfast of cereal flakes, milk, yoghurt, banana and over 38 X less than a traditional bacon and egg breakfast with toast and hash browns.

The Carbon Label Standard

Carbon Label seal organizations commit to their customers that their product meets
three criteria:

1. The product is committed to a cycle of continuous improvement in its environmental performance
2. The product line will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions over time
3. All measured carbon emissions will be offset through certified, independently audited carbon offset credits.

What is a carbon footprint and carbon offsetting?

Everyone’s talking about it but what does it mean?

Carbon footprinting measures the amount of carbon emissions produced by the things we do. From flying, to driving our cars, to the things we buy, every one of us leaves a carbon footprint on the environment. At Sequel we are calculating our organizations total footprint and looking at ways to reduce it. Our initial environmental footprint assessment will involve calculating a baseline of emissions to measure against. We will offset our environmental footprint by purchasing carbon credits through Zerofootprint, thus allowing us to be a carbon neutral organization.

Why Carbon offsetting?

Carbon dioxide emissions are about 40% higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution and at their highest levels in recorded history, covering over 650,000 years. The idea of offsetting is to counterbalance the environmental effects of our actions in order to ensure a healthier environment. For example, car travel releases climate-changing CO2 into the atmosphere. When you offset your driving, you ensure that an equal amount of CO2 is taken back out or prevented from being released in to the atmosphere. This means that your driving will be “carbon neutral.”

Phase 2 – Organizational Assessment

Phase two and three move from a focus on specific product impact to that of the company as a whole. The purpose is to identify Vega’s financial, social and environmental progress with goal towards improvement while remaining a profitable organization.

1. Stakeholder engagement – This is a process that involves generating feedback from our stakeholders to define any issues we might improve upon. Vega stakeholders include our customers, suppliers, end consumers, employees, farmers or anyone throughout the process impacted by our actions, activities and products. The stakeholder engagement is a co-creative process to help define our corporate performance indicators on a financial, (our economic impact), social, (how we interact with communities with whom we are involved), and environmental level. Once we have these along with our baseline environmental footprint, as part of our commitment to best practices we can develop an action plan towards continual improvement.
2. Internal environmental assessment – This entails taking an environmental assessment of our organization determining direct and indirect emissions such as measuring electrical uses, employee travel etc… It will provide a baseline from which to measure improvement.

Phase 3 – Sustainability Reporting

This last phase will provide us with a report that measures Vega’s financial, social and environmental footprint and progress.

• Sustainability report – Once phase two is in place, with the help of Conscious Brands we can develop an action plan towards sustainability be it environmentally through a reduction in emissions, or socially through ensuring fair trade.