We Protect

Preserving the environment

At Dole, we believe in caring for the world we live in. It is therefore our commitment to ensure the protection and conservation of the environment.

We have adopted the ISO14001 international standard for our environmental systems ensuring all our activities ranging from purchasing decisions to waste management and discharges into the air and water adhere to a set of enforceable management standards that are measured and evaluated.

In our farming operations, we observe environmentally sound procedures in growing and caring for our produce. We use sustainable agricultural practices and are active in programmes such as wastewater treatment, plastic and box recycling. We also support programmes such as marine conservation, reforestation, shifting from using wooden crates to plastic crates as part of our conservation efforts, composting, and Good Agricultural Practices.

We also embarked on conducting an analysis of our carbon footprint in our Philippines, Japan, and Korea operations with the assistance of a third party auditor to look at reducing our carbon emissions.

We actively encourage our people and communities to take part in our environmental programmes, which teach respect, understanding, and utilization of natural resources.

One of the environmental programs we have involving our communities is the Chairs for Trees project.

Through Chairs for Trees, wooden pallets that can no longer be used are converted by a local cooperative into chairs. These chairs are given to public elementary schools and sometimes churches where beneficiaries in turn plant tree seedlings provided by Dole that are sourced from a local women's cooperative. Close to 2 million trees have already been planted by this initiative.

Among our other ongoing environmental projects, we also train and educate farmers and our communities on waste minimisation, recycling, water conservation, and the protection of flora and fauna.