ISSY-LES-MOULINEUX, France — The food service and facilities management giant is moving its 'Better Tomorrow Plan' forward with a global effort to measure the environmental impacts and greening efforts at all of its clients' sites.

Sodexo this week announced an ambitious plan to assess the current environmental performance of 39,000 of its clients' sites in order to create a roadmap for sustainability efforts for the company itself as well as its customers.

The move is the latest step forward in Sodexo's "Better Tomorrow Plan," a 14-point initiative launched late last year, which lays out the broad environmental and health goals the company aims to tackle by 2020.

"The inventory is a crucial step in assessing the Group's situation and will involve measuring our current performance, setting realistic goals, identifying priorities, and setting up a timetable for our 33,900 client sites," Damien Verdier, Sodexo's Chief Marketing Officer, said in a statement. "The vast scale of the operation -- it is taking place in 80 countries, our client sites are extremely varied (schools, universities, clinics, companies, residences for seniors, etc.), and they're all different in terms of their size and the services provided -- is a real challenge that has never been taken up before."

Sodexo has already launched the initiative, which involves sending a 50-question survey to all of Sodexo's sites detailing water, energy and waste management on each of the sites. The company has also sent a question for each of the 80 countries' head offices, which will enable Sodexo to set country-specific goals an initiatives.

To date, Sodexo says that 8,800 site managers have already responded to the questionnaire, and that 21 have completed their site assessments, with 22 more in the process.

The environmental goals within the Better Tomorrow plan include:

• Ensuring compliance with a Global Sustainable Chain Code of Conduct in all the countries where we operate by 2015.
• Sourcing local, seasonable or sustainably grown or raised products in all the countries where we operate by 2015.
• Sourcing sustainable fish and seafood in all the countries where we operate by 2015.
• Sourcing and promoting sustainable equipment and supplies in all the countries where we operate by 2020.
• Reducing our carbon footprint in all the countries where we operate and at client's sites by 2020.
• Reducing our water footprint in all the countries where we operate and at client's sites by 2020.
• Reducing organic waste in all the countries where we operate and at client's sites by 2015. We will support initiatives to recover organic waste.
• Reducing non-organic waste in all the countries where we operate and at client's sites by 2015. We will support initiatives to recover non-organic waste.

Sodexo has rolled out other environmental initiatives in the past year, including the creation of a Sustainability Fellowship in partnership with Net Impact and a commitment to use only wild-caught, sustainable seafood by 2015.

_{Hills photo CC-licensed by Flickr user daveparker.}