Human Rights
Human Rights are an important dimension of ALDI’s Global Sustainability Strategy, since the way we operate, purchase goods, and the business partners we choose could impact human rights across our own operations and supply chains.
Protecting Human Rights
The responsibility to respect human rights is a global standard of expected conduct for all business enterprises wherever they operate. Being a major retailer whose supply chains touch millions of people every day, ALDI understands the importance of respecting human rights.
Our goal:
Human and Environmental rights are non-negotiable and we want them embedded into the core of our business.
Our approach to Due Diligence
Due diligence means that we systematically monitor and assess human rights and environmental risks in our supply chains. This enables us to comply with due diligence law and to honour our broader commitments towards human rights and the environment. We are invariably revising our approach to keep up with the growing number of legislations, such as the existing UK and Australia Modern Slavery Acts, and the German Supply Chain Act (LkSG) and the upcoming EU ban on forced-labour products and EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.
Our Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence Policy governs all of ALDI’s policies, requirements, and processes surrounding human rights topics. It was created in alignment with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and relevant International Labour Organization (ILO) standards.
Our stances and commitments on human rights topic areas:
Our commitment to supply chain transparency
Supply chain transparency is the foundation for all our sustainability measures. Without the knowledge of where our products come from, we cannot ensure compliance with our requirements, analyse risks, monitor, or implement projects. We work with our business partners to increase the transparency of our supply chains so that we have a better understanding of the origins of the raw materials we use in our products and the products we sell.
Protecting Human Rights in our global supply chains
Through our own operations and global supply chains, our business touches almost the entire spectrum of internationally recognised human rights. These include, but are not limited to non-discrimination, health and safety, freedom of association, the right to fair remuneration and the prohibition of human trafficking, child labour and forced labour.
We conduct risk analyses and Human Rights Impact Assessments to identify the actual and potential risks and have already identified the following raw materials as key focus areas: Cocoa, coffee, nuts, tea, tropical fruit, produce from Italy and Spain, fish and seafood. At production facility level, our sustainability strategies put a focus on garment and household textiles, shoes, and toys.
Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIAs)
We attach great importance to sustainable production conditions in the manufacturing of food and non-food products. ALDI’s Human Rights Impact Assessments are an important step towards greater transparency into supply chains and understanding our impact on human rights of affected workers and communities.
How does ALDI hold its suppliers accountable?
The ALDI Business Partner Sustainability Standards (formerly Social Standards in Production) outline our minimum requirements for ALDI’s supply chains. They cover such topics as non-tolerance for forced labour, child labour and discrimination, as well as requirements around environmental stewardship, freedom of association and occupational health and safety.
We have also developed specific policies on salient risks such as child labour and forced labour and developed several tools and programmes to address supply chain risk. This includes the Corporate Responsibility Supplier Evaluation (CRSE) program. The CRSE is being implemented in relevant high-priority supply chains to focus our buying volume on suppliers with strong CR management systems.
Our two Corporate Responsibility (CR) Units, based in Hong Kong and Bangladesh, monitor compliance of suppliers and production sites with our sustainability requirements by conducting ALDI Sustainability Assessments, and assist suppliers in the implementation of human rights and environmental standards. The two ALDI CR Units are part of a joint venture between the ALDI SOUTH Group and ALDI Nord, through ALDI CR-Support Asia Limited.
Our goal:
Our target is to ensure that 80% of our high priority product buying volume is sourced from responsible suppliers by 2030.
Please visit our national websites for more information on our Human Rights activities in each market:
ALDI Australia | HOFER Austria | ALDI China | ALDI SOUTH Germany | ALDI Hungary |
ALDI Ireland | ALDI Italy | HOFER Slovenia | ALDI Switzerland | ALDI UK | ALDI US
Driving change through partnerships
Many human rights challenges within supply chains (such as payments below minimum wages) are systemic and can only be tackled together as an industry. We will use our buying power and, in close collaboration with business and external partners, use the momentum of increasing legal requirements to drive change.
Our strategy is to create leverage through industry cooperation, industry schemes, multi-stakeholder initiatives and consulting affected stakeholders by carrying out good faith, effective, and informed engagement throughout the due diligence process.
