You can read the LMK Group Sustainability Report included in the 2021 Annual Report here
Sustainability work has been integrated into LMK Group’s operations since its inception and is an important part of the Group’s offering. The goal is to create added value for our stakeholders and at the same time contribute to sustainable social development. Achieving this requires good economic viability, environmental consideration and social commitment.
Sustainability work is divided into the five areas Food Waste, Food Products, Resource Consumption, Health and Social Responsibility. All areas are linked to the UN’s Global Sustainability Goals.
Control
The Board of Directors has the overall responsibility for sustainability issues and works actively to ensure that the company maintains long-term and trusting relationships as well as good business ethics. The Board of Directors has delegated responsibility to the management team to establish policy documents and structures to ensure their compliance. In addition to governing policy documents, there are guidelines and routine documents and checklists that govern the operations within each area of responsibility.
Food waste
Link to global sustainable development goal number 12 Sustainable consumption and Production.
Minimising the occurrence of food waste in the overall flow of food production is an important part of the Group’s sustainability work, both from a values perspective and a financial perspective. Ever since the first menues were created, the recipes have been optimised to ensure that all the ingredients are used. Thus, LMK Group consequently only buys in what the customer actually orders. In this way, the business is conducted in a way that, that from the outset, creates the conditions for minimising food waste. There are no stores or warehouses in the company’s operational flow.
We work continuously to optimize and streamline all work and system flows in the business in order to minimize our own food waste. At the same time, the customer is given the opportunity to reduce household food waste as all goods in the meal kit are consumed during the week’s dinner cooking.
The food that for some reason cannot be delivered in customers’ grocery bags but still maintains adequate quality goes to charity. When food waste occurs, it becomes organic waste that primarily goes to composting or biogas production and ultimately food waste goes to incineration.
Food products
Link to global sustainable development goal Number 12 Sustainable consumption and production, number 14 Seas and marine resources and 15 Ecosystems and biodiversity.
What we eat and how we handle food affects the environment in many ways, throughout the food chain from farm to fork. For example, by changing our eating habits, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
About a third of households’ consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions come from food, including emissions from abroad. Other negative effects of the environmental impact of food are eutrophication, overfishing and the use of chemical pesticides.
For the Group, it is important to offer customers food that has been produced sustainably to create as small carbon footprint and environmental impact as possible. In order to offer this, LMK Group adopts positions in respect of how weekly menus should be composed as well as which foods are ordered and delivered to customers. The Group’s imposes requirements on how the goods that are sent out in the bags are produced, i.e. how they are grown, harvested, processed or otherwise handled.
The business helps the customer make decisions about different food choices, and in the long run the company assists the customer in choosing sustainable food, which can potentially lead to improved food production globally.
Vegetarian dishes get a lot of space in the grocery bags, but also inspiring people to cook and enjoy vegetarian food is an important part of the company’s environmental and sustainability thinking.
In addition, the company helps the customer to reduce their sustainability footprint by striving to purchase, for example, fish from sustainable fishing, national meat, free range eggs and more.
Consumption of resources
Link to Global Sustainable Development Goals Number 9 Sustainable Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and 13 Combating Climate Change.
In order to contribute to the UN’s global goals for mitigating climate change, the Group is constantly working to identify opportunities to reduce resource consumption through smart choices and the efficient use of resources.
With home delivery to the customer’s door, the Group can contribute to reduced transport needs for those customers who subscribe to the service.
The food products for the customer’s dinners are often delivered without any “shop packaging”, which means that the amount of packaging can be reduced compared to when the customer buys food off the shop shelf.
The Group is striving to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and a large proportion of the goods are delivered in coordinated transport to the production plant and to the end consumer. By switching to single-consignment deliveries in Sweden in 2019 (the same production technology that was already being used in Norway), i.e. all the food items are delivered in a shared crate that is adapted for use on pallets, the business has optimised deliveries in such a way that more food bags can fit in one and the same transport. With this change, the need for separate refrigerated boxes has also disappeared, resulting in the elimination of return transports.
Health
Link to global sustainable development goal Number 3 Good health and well-being.
Inspiring varied eating habits has always been one of the cornerstones of the Group’s operations, and this will continue to be the case. By contributing to healthy eating habits, LMK Group initially wants to facilitate and create the conditions for a healthy lifestyle, and in the longer term to contribute to improved public health. The Group has a vision whereby people should not only eat tastier, but also better, and it therefore conducts planning and nutritional calculations for the majority of its recipes based on Nordic nutritional recommendations.
It is a great responsibility of LMK Group to develop recipes and choose products that contribute to the customer getting healthy and sustainable meals, as well as to ensure that the goods are handled correctly and sustainably throughout the production flow. The Group inspires and helps customers reduce the intake of red meat and to discover alternative protein sources. Furthermore, there are options for those with allergies or intolerance – among other things, the possibility of choosing a food bag with goods without lactose is provided.
As nutritional calculations are performed for almost all of the meals, the customer can rest assured that they are receiving varied and healthy food. The nutritional calculations lean towards the Nordic nutritional recommendations (NNR 2012) and, in practice, mean that the recipes are not only subject to nutritional calculations, but are also tailored to fall within the framework of the recommendations. NNR 2012 contains guidelines for eating habits that in turn provide the conditions for generally good health, in combination with good physical activity. The advice describes how to eat to get the amount of vitamins, minerals, protein, fat and carbohydrates recommended in the nutritional recommendations.
The business quality assures every step of food management to ensure that the food customers receive on the table is completely safe to eat. From production, goods reception, packing in boxes to transport and delivery, there are procedures to minimize risks of food quality deteriorating or customers being exposed to hygiene risks. Each food bag is handled in an unbroken cold chain in a sealed packaging.
We are responsive to the customer in case of any complaints, questions or criticisms regarding the choice of goods and/or any comments on the condition of the goods on delivery. Recommendations on what are considered morally and ethically viable foods are constantly changing and the company is trying to be attentive as far as possible and keep abreast of trends and currents.
Social responsibility
Link to global sustainable development goal Number 2 No hunger and 8 Decent working conditions and economic growth.
The issue of ethics and social responsibility is central to LMK Group and permeates day-to-day operations. The Group is built on, and has achieved success through, value driven entrepreneurship in which sustainability in a number of areas, not least social responsibility, has been the governing principle. The Group considers it essential to be an active piece of the puzzle in the combined work towards the global goals.
The Group has successfully driven a CSR project in Kenya since 2010, Plate for Plate, which focused on providing school lunches to children. The initiative was funded by the Group and by involving customers of Linas Matkasse and Adams Matkasse, who donated through their mealkit orders. LMKG has decided to not continue its engagement in Plate for Plate as of 2022, but instead look for new opportunities for societal engagement which are more closely connected to the company’s local markets in Scandinavia. The project is however being continued by other partners.
LMK Group are committed to conducting business ethically and responsibly and believe that our suppliers should share these same values. Therefore, we have outlined the minimum standards we expect from our suppliers in our Supplier Code of Conduct, to ensure that all workers are treated with respect and dignity, and that our products and services are produced in a sustainable and responsible manner.
Our code covers a range of topics, including compliance with relevant legislation, respect for workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, non-discrimination, prohibition of forced labor, fair working conditions, equitable compensation, reasonable working hours, occupational health and safety, child labor, special protections for young employees, protection of the environment and animal welfare, and ethical business behavior. We expect all of our suppliers to uphold these standards and to work with us to continually improve their performance.
You can read the LMK Group Supplier Code of Conduct here
