According to scientific research, foods such as coffee, chocolate, wine, honey and bananas could disappear in the coming decades due to the effects of climate change on their production (rising temperatures, long droughts, the spread of pests, etc.).

One of ALDI's major objectives as a global retailer is to enable everyone to shop responsibly and sustainably. This will be impossible in the medium and long term if some of the most important foods in our lives disappear.

ALDI's brief was to create an idea that would be so powerful and so visible that it could influence its suppliers to such an extent that it would lead to a rethinking of the production systems for these endangered foods in order to make them more sustainable, and thus to position ALDI as a benchmark for sustainability in the retail sector.

When the effects of climate change are discussed, we always hear about the extinction of animals, but no one realises that foods such as chocolate, coffee, wine, honey and bananas could also disappear.

In other words, food in a supermarket not only expires, it could also become extinct.

And so we created the EXTINCTION DATE.

In the same way that all products have an expiry date on their packaging. At ALDI, we made the Extinction Date visible on the packaging of thousands of endangered products: Chocolate (2050), honey (2070), coffee (2050), wine (2068) and bananas (2050).

The sticker became a powerful lobbying measure that caused hundreds of suppliers to reconsider their production methods and help us prevent the extinction of their own foodstuffs.

As a global retailer, ALDI has two main objectives: that everyone should be able to shop in a responsible and sustainable way, and that its business activities should have as little impact on the planet as possible. This led us directly to intervene in the way ALDI's hundreds of suppliers work to ensure that the products on their shelves are as sustainable as possible.

With this as a starting point, we created a long-term sustainability platform that aims to protect the planet and all that it provides us with (food, natural resources, raw materials, etc.).

And the first step to ensure the survival of endangered foods was to convince the hundreds of ALDI suppliers who grow and produce them to do so in a more sustainable way. Because growing cocoa, coffee and grapes should not contribute to the disappearance of chocolate, coffee and wine.

Once the strategy was defined, work on the Extinction Date campaign began with an exhaustive search for scientific data supporting the source of the Extinction Dates.

Once the Extinction Dates were found, they were transferred to thousands of products in more than 300 ALDI Spain shops.

The campaign was also launched in January 2023 in general media with a TV commercial, radio on Spotify, and an outdoor campaign in Madrid and Barcelona. We also launched it digitally with a landing page and social media content and challenges.

Since the launch of the campaign, we have increased the pressure on our suppliers, achieving spectacular results:

1,500 coffee growers changed their production methods to implement sustainable production practices. 75% of all coffee sold at ALDI is now sustainable.

99% of cocoa suppliers are now sustainable, making virtually all chocolate sold at ALDI sustainable.

No ALDI fruit and vegetable supplier will ever use pesticides that can harm bees. And all fruit and vegetables sold at ALDI are already sustainable, for example 100% of our bananas.

And no supplier working with ALDI will ever pollute natural resources such as rivers, seas or oceans.