We Care – the sus­taina­bility label for food com­panies and their entire supply chains

We Care sets com­pre­hensive sus­taina­bility stan­dards and offers a cer­ti­fi­cation pro­gramme for com­panies ope­rating in the food industry. We Care cer­ti­fi­cation focuses on all aspects of sus­taina­bility. This means it:
  • encom­passes both envi­ron­mental and CSR stan­dards;
  • eva­luates entire product ranges, not just sel­ected flagship pro­ducts;
  • and eva­luates com­panies’ own sus­taina­bility efforts as well as their supply chain management.

We Care helps com­panies to embed sus­taina­bility sys­te­ma­ti­cally within their ope­ra­tions, to con­ti­nuously improve sus­taina­bility per­for­mance and to make their efforts cre­dible and easy to com­mu­nicate through external auditing and cer­ti­fi­cation.

Value creation in the food industry always has to be con­sidered in a global context. Com­panies today need to ensure that they are managing their busi­nesses and creating value across their supply chains in a fair, sus­tainable and socially respon­sible way. On top of that, they need to prove that their efforts are cre­dible. All this can seem like a daunting challenge. This is where We Care can help.

Any food company that imports, pro­cesses or pro­duces food them­selves can become We Care cer­tified. This also applies to com­panies that partly or exclu­sively use third parties to produce raw mate­rials or finished pro­ducts and com­panies that operate as who­le­salers or retailers for their raw mate­rials or finished pro­ducts.

There are already num­erous cer­ti­fi­cation pro­grammes in place that validate whether pro­ducts are pro­duced in a fair, sus­tainable or organic way at the raw material phase. We Care the­r­efore pri­marily focuses on sus­taina­bility management during the sub­se­quent phases in each supply chain, for example, when goods are imported, manu­fac­tured and branded. We Care also takes an across-the-board approach to sus­tainable supply chain management by pro­moting the use of organic, fair trade and sus­taina­bility cer­ti­fi­ca­tions at pro­ducer level in all supply chains.

What can We Care do for you? We Carecan:

  • Introduce a com­pre­hensive standard with a uniform cer­ti­fi­cation system.
  • Support inte­grated sus­taina­bility management systems for spe­cific business loca­tions and supply chains in the food industry.
  • Provide an inde­pendent auditing and vali­dation service for sus­tainable ope­ra­tions.
  • Certify management systems.
  • Help you focus on areas of deve­lo­pment either at a basic or advanced level.
  • Offer an inte­grated system instead of mul­tiple cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for com­panies that have not yet imple­mented sus­taina­bility stan­dards.
  • Inte­grate existing envi­ron­mental and CSR cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and close any remaining gaps in sus­taina­bility management for com­panies that already have separate sus­taina­bility cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in place.
  • Ensure cre­di­bility and trans­pa­rency across supply chains.
  • Provide infor­mation that can be used in cor­porate com­mu­ni­ca­tions.
  • Produce evi­dence of sus­taina­bility management and sus­tainable supply chain management to business partners (B2B) and inte­rested members of the public.
  • Provide trans­pa­rency for con­sumers by means of a cor­porate sus­taina­bility label that can be dis­played on organic pro­ducts. This only applies when com­panies adhere to com­pre­hensive sus­taina­bility stan­dards across the board and not just for sel­ected pro­ducts. (The label can only be used if advanced cer­ti­fi­cation is achieved for B2C.)

We Care’srespon­sible body

The German division of the Research Institute of Organic Agri­culture e.V. (FiBL Germany) is the body respon­sible for the We Care standard. FiBL holds all the rights to the standard and the We Care label.