TURIN, Italy – Lavazza renews its partnership with Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, an international event dedicated to good, clean and fair food, the environment and food politics, organised by Slow Food, the Region of Piedmont and the City of Turin.
Since it started working with Slow Food, the Company has embraced the philosophy of good, clean and fair and believes in the strategic importance of food education, both crucial to support product quality and ethical correctness.
Going back over 20 years, the partnership is based on deeply held values that led in 2021 to the creation of the Coffee Coalition, a network bringing together all the players in the coffee industry (producers, roasters, distributors and consumers), united by their love of coffee and inspired by the idea of good, clean and fair coffee for everyone, with the aim of maximising the reach of its collaborative network in the supply chain around sustainable development goals.
This shared vision was the basis for the partnership formed at the first Salone del Gusto, in 1996, when Lavazza not only decided to sponsor the event but embraced its philosophy and radical focus on product quality. Slow Food, the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto event and the partnership with Lavazza have been growing year by year ever since.
The 2004 event, for example, saw the launch of ¡Tierra!, the Lavazza Foundation’s main social responsibility initiative, while in 2014 it was the turn of The Earth Defenders project, which used the Lavazza Calendar (photos by three contemporary masters: Steve McCurry, Joey L. and Denis Rouvre) to tell the public about modern heroes who protect their crops in ways that also protect the land.
There will be numerous forms of collaboration and initiatives during the event, all in line with the Company’s priority commitment to sustainable development.
For over 125 years in fact, Lavazza’s business model has been based on synergy between its system of values and its economic solidity, as reflected in its unceasing ethical and economic commitment to sustainability. In the last 20 years, efforts in this direction have been sharply accelerated, first with the creation of the Lavazza Foundation in 2004, which now supports 32 projects in 20 countries and benefits over 136,000 coffee growers, with the aim of improving coffee yield and quality, promoting entrepreneurship among growers, empowering women and young people, and improving their living conditions. 2015 was another key year, with the voluntary publication of the first sustainability report and the launch of a programme to integrate sustainability into the Company’s business operations, consistently with the soon to be endorsed 2030 Agenda of the United Nations and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In 2020, the programme was renamed Blend for Better, expressing an approach to Corporate Social Responsibility that stems from Lavazza’s founding values and translates into today’s sustainable development strategies and initiatives.
