`Director of the City's Investment and Trade Promotion Center Trần Phú Lữ speaks at the seminar "ESG - Green standards for the food industry" on December 20. Photo tapchinongthonmoi.vn

HCM CITY – The HCM City Trade and Investment Promotion Center cooperated with its Food Association to organise the seminar "ESG - Green standards for the food industry" on Wednesday.

According to Director of the City's Investment and Trade Promotion Centre Trần Phú Lữ, who spoke at the seminar, ESG standing for environmental - social - governance is a framework used to assess an organisation's business practices and performance on various sustainability and ethical issues. ESG is the key to strong and long-term development in all fields. However, this set of ESG standards is still quite new to the Vietnamese business community.

The ESG conference is an opportunity for businesses to access a lot of useful information and answer their difficulties and problems in implementing ESG into production and business activities to improve production efficiency and competitiveness of Vietnamese goods in the world market.

In reality, many Vietnamese businesses have made changes in their management thinking on sustainable development and included ESG in their business strategies. Small and medium-sized Vietnamese enterprises operating in the field of consumer goods production such as food and beverage are gradually implementing sustainable development such as producing environmentally friendly products.

Moreover, they have been paying attention to local economic development, and community support activities and especially focusing on producing green products and products labelled green by reputable domestic organizations.

Not outside the trend of applying ESG among businesses globally, the goals to enhance the sustainable development of businesses in Việt Nam are gradually being concretised. In particular, green products are products that meet 4 criteria. The first criterium is that products are made from environmentally friendly materials; secondly, products provide safe solutions for the environment and health to replace toxic products; thirdly, products reduce environmental impact during use (less waste, use of renewable energy, low maintenance costs); finally, products create a friendly and safe environment for health.

At the conference, experts discussed and deployed useful content to businesses about global ESG trends as well as the level of influence and main strategies for the food industry to implement ESG; tools to support businesses in inventorying greenhouse gases and producing reports; solutions to optimise transportation processes and manage supply chains in a sustainable way through Carbon and ESG certifications; green, environmentally friendly food packaging.

However, the development of ESG for Vietnamese businesses is facing many difficulties. Therefore, relevant authorities need to develop tools to support businesses in inventorying greenhouse gases and publishing reports as well as have solutions to optimise transportation processes and manage supply chains in a sustainable way through carbon and ESG certifications.

Moreover, responsible agencies should promote the development of a green and environmentally friendly food packaging manufacturing industry. – VNS