Report on sustainable development 2022
Contents:
Foreword
Dear friends of the Chocolate Museum,
We are pleased to present the Sustainable Development Report for 2022. As predicted, the economic recovery in Germany continued last year with the end of the coronavirus crisis. Despite the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, tourist activities have increased. The Chocolate Museum also benefited from this and, with 520,000 guests, we were able to achieve 90% of the visitor numbers from 2019 and leave the low visitor numbers from the coronavirus crisis far behind us. Despite difficult conditions due to inflation and a war in Europe, we are counting on a further recovery in visitor numbers and hope to reach or even exceed the pre-corona level in 2023.
The topic of sustainable development is the focus of our museum work and is being driven forward with various measures. The redesign of the “World Cocoa Journey” was planned and built in 2022. It was officially opened in March 2023. We are proud of the extremely positive feedback from our visitors. An important component of our initiative in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has thus been realized. By training our employees to become “SDG scouts”, we have also underpinned this measure in educational terms.
Our “Climate Chocolate Tree” has become a wonderful way for visitors to round off their visit to the museum. By making a small donation, you are helping to reforest an area of rainforest in Mexico. Our guests have now planted more than 50,000 trees. Many thanks to all donors!
Enjoy this sustainability report for 2022, we look forward to your feedback.
Annette Imhoff and Dr. Christian Unterberg-Imhoff
The Chocolate Museum
Chocolate delights young and old alike. A preference for sweets is in our DNA. So it’s no wonder that the cultural history of cocoa and chocolate goes back around 5,000 years. The Cologne Chocolate Museum is dedicated to all facets of the “food of the gods” and allows its visitors to experience the entire history, from the indigenous civilizations of South and Central America to the modern industrial product of our time.
The new permanent exhibition shows the “world tour of cocoa” from cultivation, harvesting and transportation to processing. Visitors are given an impressive insight into where our cocoa comes from and how it is grown and processed. The impact of cocoa cultivation on the living conditions of people in the cocoa-growing countries is an important focus here. Thematic islands include problem areas such as poverty and child labor, but also solutions through different cultivation methods, sustainable cultivation, a living income, fair trade and the positive influence of transparent supply chains.
Guided tours with titles such as “100% chocolate”, “On the trail of the secret of chocolate” or “Chocolate – sustainable and fair?” allow our guests to delve even deeper into the world of chocolate – with tasty samples and food for thought.
Redesign of our exhibition
The ecology of the tropics, the living conditions of cocoa-growing families, the various different cultivation methods and the cocoa trade are highly complex topics. Presenting these in a clear and understandable way is a major challenge, which we accept with great commitment. Our permanent exhibition has been completely redesigned to make the journey of the cocoa bean from cultivation, harvest and transportation, as well as the living conditions of the people in the countries where it is grown, clear and understandable for every visitor using the latest educational findings. The new “Cocoa’s Journey around the World” tour presents topics relating to the cultivation, production, transportation and trade of cocoa using the latest educational and scientific methods. We are also making sustainable development the central theme of the exhibition. The United Nations’ global treaty for the future, the 2030 Agenda with all 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), was integrated into the new exhibition as a central theme. Topics such as sustainable forms of cultivation, social grievances such as child labor and poverty, but also positive initiatives through living incomes, fair trade or corporate programs to improve the living conditions of cocoa farmers are shown in the exhibition. In the newly created themed room “How sustainable development can succeed”, the focus is on the world in which our visitors live. Here we present a wide range of opportunities to contribute to the sustainable development of our society. Our own commitment to sustainability as a museum is also addressed here. At a multimedia table, guests can playfully experience and explore various facets of sustainability.
In June 2022, the redesign of the entrance and cash desk area, the catering area and our new group rooms was successfully completed. In the past, Makassar tropical wood was used in the catering trade. When the entrance area was renovated in 2022, the use of tropical wood was deliberately avoided and local, sustainably grown smoked oak was used instead.
New concepts for our guided tours and tastings made it necessary to expand our range of rooms. Since July 2022, two modern and beautifully redesigned group rooms have been available for our guided tours, tastings and educational programs.
Our commitment to sustainability
We at the Chocolate Museum not only want to do justice to our role as a multiplier and extracurricular place of learning for education for sustainable development. We are leading the way towards sustainable development ourselves. This means we have also achieved our self-imposed goal of being climate-neutral in 2022.
Climate neutrality
Climate change remains a defining issue in our society and confirms that we are on course for climate neutrality.
In everything we do, one thing is certain: our private and professional activities are associated with CO₂ emissions and have a negative impact on the global climate. As not all emissions can currently be avoided, a way must be found to compensate for these unavoidable emissions.
We offset the 550 tons of CO₂ emissions projected for the Chocolate Museum and its employees for 2022 with our partner Plant-for-the-Planet
As in previous years, the following measures were taken to this end
Retirement of emission reduction certificates (Gold Standard)
Responsibility for CO₂ emissions from the manufacture of products and services that cannot be further reduced can be assumed by purchasing CO₂ certificates. For this purpose, CO₂ certificates are purchased in the corresponding quantity and retired. The decommissioning verifiably confirms that the Chocolate Museum has made a contribution to climate protection that corresponds to the calculated CO2 emissions of the Chocolate Museum. We have thus made our activities climate-neutral.
Planting an appropriate number of trees
Trees are a very efficient CO₂ store. They need CO₂ for their growth, draw it from the atmosphere, store it in the form of wood and release oxygen accordingly. This is why our forests are often referred to as the lungs of the earth.
Once we have determined our CO₂ footprint, we can then plant the appropriate number of trees to absorb this CO₂. As CO₂ knows no national borders, it is completely irrelevant where it is produced and where it is offset. However, this measure is not suitable for permanently offsetting our carbon footprint, as the bound CO₂ is released again after decades or centuries, depending on how the wood is used. Nevertheless, planting trees is a suitable measure to slow down the rise in CO₂ in the atmosphere. There are also many positive additional effects, such as an improvement in the microclimate, stabilization of biodiversity and newly created employment opportunities for the growers.
In addition to the decommissioning certificates, we have tied up the same amount of CO₂ in the medium term by planting trees. In addition to this commitment, our visitors make a further significant contribution to climate protection. In 2022, we integrated the “Climate Chocolate Tree”, a tree donation machine, into our exhibition. Our visitors can donate a tree for one euro, which will be planted by Plant-for-the-planet in Yucatan. As a thank you, the visitors receive small chocolate balls at the museum’s expense. We are approaching the 50,000 euro donation mark: our visitors are making an important contribution to achieving the 17 sustainability goals.
Sponsoring academies to train ambassadors for climate justice
The academies are “one-day programs” in which children and young people learn interesting facts about the causes and consequences of the climate crisis. You will become an ambassador for climate justice and thus part of the global network of active children and young people at Plant-for-the-planet. They learn how to give presentations to sensitize other children and adults to the topic of climate justice and encourage them to take action. A wonderful contribution to the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
Sustainable chocolate packaging
The napolitains, chocolate balls and chocolate dragees produced and packaged in the glass chocolate factory are sold in environmentally friendly and compostable packaging. The cardboard is made from recycled paper and the inner bag is produced from film made from renewable raw materials. The next step is to also design the packaging for the wooden figures and individual plaques in a sustainable way.
The Chocolate Museum thus makes an important contribution to environmental protection and actively helps to reduce packaging waste.
Education for sustainable development
In the fall of 2015, the United Nations adopted a global sustainability agenda (Agenda 2030). The goal of the 2030 Agenda is to create a peaceful and sustainable society. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) form the core of the agreement. These include, for example, the goals “No poverty”, “Sustainable consumption and production” and “Climate protection measures”. One of the foundations of the 2030 Agenda is the goal of “quality education”, which is the basis for achieving all other goals. Only if people are informed about economic, ecological and social interrelationships can they make sustainable decisions and act sustainably.
The Chocolate Museum takes up this central goal in the form of education for sustainable development and informs its visitors about the problems and challenges in the cocoa sector. Our exhibition acts as a multiplier for the 17 sustainability goals. We show how companies and public and private organizations are working to improve the current situation and achieve sustainable development goals. We try to convey to our guests what we can all do to improve the situation. ESD is therefore an integral part of the museum’s mission statement and the basis of our educational work.
Our educational program on sustainable development
The topic of sustainable development is reflected to varying degrees in all of our educational programs. We offer schoolchildren the themed tour “Sustainable & fair – chocolate & cocoa”. During the one-hour tour, the pupils learn about the working and living conditions of farmers in the West African cocoa sector. We talk to you about the ecological consequences of cocoa cultivation, poverty, child labor and world trade. You will discuss possible solutions together and what we can all do to improve the situation. The sustainability tour is becoming increasingly popular with school classes and was booked almost as often as other school tours in 2022.
The Chocolate Museum regularly offers free training courses for teachers. The transition is not right here…teacher training out or make reference to the topic…
Educational offers for museum employees
In addition to cultural history events, further training on the topic of sustainability is an integral part of our offer for our employees in all areas of the museum. We are not only concerned with content, but also with the question of how this can be communicated in an interesting and exciting way. Our training courses are often carried out in collaboration with our educational partners, such as the OroVerde Tropical Forest Foundation or the Südwind Institute.
Our educational staff
The Chocolate Museum employs three museum educators, Eileen Schwarz, Olaf Vortmann and Florian Odijk, who lead a team of over 30 freelancers to run the various educational programs. They are specially trained and educated for the educational and mediation work in the chocolate museum. At the turn of the year 2022 to 2023, 20 permanent and freelance employees were trained and certified as “SDG scouts” in a two-day workshop that we held with Engagement Global.
We regularly monitor the quality of our pedagogical staff through job shadowing. The results are recorded and discussed in detail in an evaluation meeting and potential for improvement is recorded.
Sustainability Week
Every year, the theme week “Chocolate & Cocoa – Sustainable & Fair!” takes place at the Chocolate Museum. Visitors were also able to take part in a diverse program of activities in 2022. The program included two components: on the one hand, there was a discounted tour offer for school classes, and on the other hand, guests of the museum had the opportunity to talk to sustainability partners of the Chocolate Museum, taste fair chocolate and learn about sustainability in general on the Whitsun weekend 2022. Engagement Global, Plant-for-the-Planet, Dillicious and DeLaSelva were on site.
As part of this Sustainability Week, the Chocolate Museum is organizing a highly acclaimed international symposium on sustainability issues relating to cocoa cultivation. In 2022, together with the Südwind Institute (https://www.suedwind-institut.de) and GIZ (www.giz.de), we organized a conference entitled “Cocoa production in times of climate crisis – challenges and solutions”. This was a great success with exciting contributions and results. The conference was attended by 37 participants from industry, NGOs, academia and cultural institutions from Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, the Netherlands, England, Switzerland, Belgium and France.
School partnerships
The Chocolate Museum has maintained educational partnerships with schools in the region for many years. The aim is to establish long-term and intensive cooperation in order to facilitate extracurricular learning for schools. The partnerships are characterized, among other things, by the fact that projects and workshops are jointly developed and carried out with pupils.
After a break due to the coronavirus, several workshops, guided tours and projects with educational partners also took place in 2022.
- In January, the One-World-AG of the Schiller-Gymnasium in Cologne came by to talk about sustainability. The focus was on questions such as: What are the challenges in cocoa cultivation? How can you tell whether chocolate meets sustainable standards (e.g. ban on child labor, minimum income)?
- In May, the so-called Europe Day took place at the vocational college on Lindenstraße. As part of this, an education officer visited the vocational students and worked with them on various topics: Chocolate as a European product, the routes of chocolate within Europe and sustainable factors in the chocolate value chain.
- The Robert-Wetzlar-Berufskolleg Bonn visited the museum in December on Human Rights Day and familiarized themselves intensively with the human rights situation in the growing regions.
Awards
In order to ensure the quality of our educational programs, the Chocolate Museum has undergone two certification processes since 2018. The existing educational program was critically reviewed and future goals in the area of ESD were defined. Compliance with these targets is regularly monitored and documented in an annual sustainability report.
NUA Nature and Environment Academy NRW
In December 2018, the Chocolate Museum became the first museum to be certified for ESD. The award was presented by the Nature and Environmental Protection Academy in Remscheid. The certification process lasted over a year and covered not only the educational programs, but also the qualification of employees working in the education sector. The organizational structure and building management were also examined. In 2021, the Chocolate Museum was the first museum in Germany to be recertified for a further two years.
UNESCO Global Action Program on Education for Sustainable Development
In October 2019, the Chocolate Museum was recognized for the first time by the German UNESCO Commission for its “outstanding work” in structurally anchoring education for sustainable development as a “strong role model”. The Chocolate Museum Cologne once again received the coveted award in 2021.
Our partners:
Lindt & Sprüngli and the Farming Program
The Chocolate Museum has been cooperating with the chocolate manufacturer Lindt & Sprüngli since 2006. The high ethical and sustainability standards in the procurement of raw materials and in the processing of high-quality chocolate characterize this company. Cocoa is the most important raw material for premium chocolate. This is why Lindt invests in preserving the environment and improving the living standards of cocoa farmers, because this is the only way to take responsibility for the future.
Quote from the report on the Lindt & Sprüngli Farming Program
https://www.farming-program.com/de/
“High-quality cocoa beans are the heart of our chocolates. At Lindt & Sprüngli, we take responsibility from the selection of the cocoa beans to the production of the finished chocolate products – from the “bean to the bar”. Lindt & Sprüngli has therefore set up its own sustainability program for cocoa beans: the Lindt & Sprüngli Farming Program. The program enables us to trace our cocoa beans back to their place of origin and thus support the farmers and their communities according to their specific needs. It enables farmers to manage their farms in accordance with good agricultural, social, ecological and economic practice. Local partners implement the program on site with a team of dedicated employees. The commitment helps the farmers to increase their yields and consequently their income, shows them how the agricultural use of the land can be guaranteed in the long term and promotes access to cultivation equipment and infrastructure.
This is how we take responsibility:
All products that leave our company ultimately meet our commitment to sustainability along the entire value chain. In our countries of origin, cocoa production is facing major challenges. Small farms, old and diseased cocoa trees and limited agricultural practices can lead to low yields and insufficient income for farmers and their families. Poor infrastructure and a lack of access to agricultural equipment make production even more difficult. Finally, environmental challenges such as climate change and deforestation are also key issues. It is our priority to tackle these hurdles and take responsibility for sustainable cocoa cultivation.
Lindt & Sprüngli Sustainability Plan – Our commitment to a better future
Sustainability is an integral part of Lindt & Sprüngli’s business model. Our mission is to manufacture premium products and combine our high quality standards with equally high ethical and sustainable standards in every aspect of our business. This is reflected in our commitment to sustainability along the entire value chain. The Lindt & Sprüngli Sustainability Plan forms the strategy for the sustainability area of our business model. With the sustainability plan, we focus on areas that are most relevant to our stakeholders and have the greatest impact on the environment, society and the economy. Our intention is to promote successful cooperation within the company, improve the livelihoods of our suppliers in the countries of origin, contribute to an intact environment and inspire our consumers.”
The Sustainable Cocoa Forum
The Chocolate Museum has been a member of the Forum for Sustainable Cocoa since 2012. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL), the German confectionery industry, the German food trade and various civil society organizations have joined forces. Together, they are pursuing the goal of improving the living conditions of cocoa farmers and their families and increasing the cultivation and marketing of sustainable cocoa. The Chocolate Museum has also been a member of the Cocoa Forum since 2012.
The members want to promote sustainable cocoa production through joint activities in the growing regions and a more intensive exchange of existing experiences. To this end, they have committed themselves to three fundamental goals. These are concretized by twelve individual goals.
In the Sustainability Working Group, key points from the cocoa sector are discussed with representatives of all four member groups, initiated and implemented by the individual members. For example, it was also defined what all members understand by sustainable cocoa and the individual goals mentioned above were adapted to current needs. In the past year, various individual goals were also put to the test and discussed again. The working group is currently focusing on the issue of a living income, a fair income for cocoa farmers, and how this can be implemented.
Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
The BMZ is responsible for coordinating Germany’s international development cooperation and is committed, among other things, to the worldwide realization of human rights and the fight against hunger and poverty. The Chocolate Museum has been working with the BMZ in the field of education for many years.
Engagement Global. Service for development initiatives
Engagement Global informs and advises individuals, civil society, municipalities, schools, businesses and foundations in Germany on development policy projects and supports them financially.
Since 2018, the Chocolate Museum and Engagement Global have been successfully cooperating as part of the Sustainable Development Week, which takes place annually to mark European Sustainability Week. Engagement Global also supports the training of the museum’s educational staff and information events for teachers. At the turn of the year 2022 to 2023, 20 permanent and freelance employees were trained and certified as “SDG scouts” in a two-day workshop, funded by Engagement Global.
Plant-for-the-Planet
The foundation was established in 2011 by Felix Finkbeiner and his father Frithjof Finkbeiner. The two have set themselves the goal of raising awareness of the climate crisis and global justice among children and adults. Planting trees directly counteracts global warming. The aim is to actively reforest one trillion trees in the coming years, i.e. around 30 % of the current global tree population.
In addition, a high-quality chocolate, “The Good Chocolate”, is produced, the sale of which also supports tree planting. “The Good Chocolate” can be tasted as part of our Sustainable & Fair theme tour. In this way, we are helping to raise awareness and support for the project.
Through events, Plant-for-the-Planet tries to raise awareness of the ecological and social consequences of climate change. The Chocolate Museum supports these measures with joint events. The Chocolate Museum and Plant-for-the-Planet work closely together in the field of education. During the annual Sustainability Week at the Chocolate Museum, regular workshops and lectures are held on topics relating to global justice and the impact of tree planting campaigns.
About this report
The Chocolate Museum has undertaken to inform all interested parties about its activities once a year in a sustainability report. This report provides information about our activities in 2022. The report will be published on the website of the Chocolate Museum and can be downloaded there by anyone interested.
