Dole promises a carbon-neutral banana

London, 16 August: Fruit and vegetable giant Dole Food has pledged to reduce to zero carbon dioxide emissions from its bananas and pineapples grown in Costa Rica.

In collaboration with the Costa Rican ministry of the environment and energy and the Fondo Nacional de Financiamiento Forestal, Dole Food's subsidiary in the country will ensure that its entire supply chain is carbon neutral, from growing the fruit, to packing it, transporting it and distributing it to markets in North America and Europe.

Costa Rican environment minister Roberto Dobles said: "With this agreement, Dole demonstrates its enormous capacity to innovate and develop processes that will be reflected in benefits to the environment. I hope that this initiative will be followed by others in the private sector, so that we may unite efforts in favour of the environment."

Costa Rica plans to become a carbon neutral country by 2021.

David DeLorenzo, president and CEO of Dole Food, added: "The environment is a concern for all of us. Companies, consumers, governments and non-governmental organisations should endeavour to promote and adopt new production and distribution methods and consumption behaviour in order to reverse harmful trends to the environment."

The firm indicated that it will work closely with the government agencies on the project. Vice president and director of worldwide corporate social responsibility Sylvain Cuperlier said: "Dole's achievements in this area will come from working relationships with our employees, independent producers, labour representatives, government, academia, NGO's, customers and suppliers."

Dole Food ships around 31 million boxes of bananas and 13 million boxes of pineapples a year from its business in Costa Rica. The firm has not yet calculated the emissions associated with this supply chain. In 2006, the firm reported revenues of $6.2 billion. It did not disclose details of how it plans to achieve carbon neutrality, or the degree of offsetting which will be involved.