NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESS Newswire / February 12, 2025 / Madagascar is the largest source of natural vanilla for Bath & Body Works and grows the majority of the world's Vanilla Planifolia species.
As an important part of Bath & Body Works' ESG journey, we're working to create lasting, positive impacts through sustainable sourcing practices. Beginning in 2023, we partnered with Antea Group, an international expert in sustainability, to build a tool that allows us to better understand the social and environmental implications of the materials used in the most important areas of our business (for both merchandise and non-merchandise purchasing). This tool was developed to help support our ESG commitments toward improving the sustainability profile of priority ingredients and contributing to resilient communities.
Based on this initial assessment, we embarked on our journey to pilot programs that help us make progress on our commitments, starting with Madagascan vanilla.
Madagascar is the largest source of natural vanilla for Bath & Body Works and grows the majority of the world's Vanilla Planifolia species. Madagascar is rich in biodiversity, but the impacts of natural catastrophes, such as droughts, and economic conditions pose a risk to vanilla farmers.
Through a new partnership with the Givaudan Foundation, we're working to improve the living conditions of Madagascan vanilla farmers. We are subsidizing 3,000 Madagascan-produced, energy-efficient cookstoves over three years for 3,000 farming households in the Sava region of Madagascar, which is where most of the natural vanilla in our products originates.
Similar projects like this in the past have shown to:
Reduce number of trees harvested to use as fuel in cooking.
Reduce time spent by households to collect firewood.
Reduce smoke exposure for households.
Create local jobs as stove resellers in the region.
We believe that finding ways to positively impact these farmers is the right thing to do to help ensure this ingredient is available for future generations. We look forward to using learnings from our Madagascan vanilla program to learn, grow and most importantly, deepen our focus on what truly matters - our people, communities and planet.
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Contact Info:
Spokesperson: Bath & Body Works
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SOURCE: Bath & Body Works
