Sure you can get to know someone over the internet, or even on the phone, but we all know that eventually you have to meet face to face before you really get to know them. Its exactly the same for us with our farmers - there is just no substitute for a face to face chat to make sure that we properly understand what its like to grow strawberries in Poland for example and the kind of challenges they face to produce a great crop, look after their workers and protect the environment.

In 2007 we started a programme of supplier visits which involves innocent team members, independent auditors and global sustainability organisations visiting our suppliers, and working out how to get the best fruit with the right result for the people and the planet. As we source from literally thousands of farms there is no way we can visit or audit every single farm and still have time to make smoothies, so for each fruit and country we make sure we visit a representative sample of farms.

So we know that you may well ask if it is really sustainable to go to all these places, couldn’t we use local people or just conference call? This is a tough call - how do we balance the environmental impacts of travelling with achieving the best sustainability solution, whilst also reassuring our consumers that we are working seriously on these issues? Well this is our decision hierarchy:

• We start with online communication with the supplier to assess the level of sustainability risk – if they can demonstrate strong progress (preferably externally verified) against the major risk areas then we don’t visit.
• If there is an existing certification scheme that adequately covers our sustainability criteria then we don’t visit.
• If we do visit, our preference is to catch the train – although admittedly that is only feasible for western Europe.
• When we visit we pack as much as possible into the agenda to get the most out of the time we have there.
and
• We try to find local organizations, industry groups or suppliers who can continue our work once we have left.

We think this keeps the right balance between achieving the best result for sustainability with the minimum of environmental damage.

For more stuff on what we have learnt in our visits see these blog posts and stories in our weekly email newsletter: