DIANA is a company that throughout 72 years of accompanying salvadorans in their daily lives, bears witness to its firm determination to create a positive impact on society and the environment.

VIDEO: DIANA works for the country's sustainable development

The company is clear that only through a series of key decisions can it demonstrate its commitment to sustainability and social responsibility, intervening in salvadoran communities with its recycling plans, water treatment, support for farmers, and community development.

"Currently we have invested millions of dollars so that the water we are processing is returned to the environment with all the requirements that the law needs, and now we are processing all the water we use. This year we reduced water consumption by 15% and we are going to reach 2026 with a 40% reduction of the water consumption we currently have”, said Luis Núñez, Legal and Corporate Affairs director of DIANA.

People collecting plastics in the lake of Ilopango, as part of the activities carried out by DIANA in the area.

In the case of recycling DIANA promotes the circular economy which is a production and consumption model that involves repairing, sharing, reusing, renewing and recycling existing materials and products as many times as possible to create added value and thus extend the useful life of materials as much as possible.

The main goal is to reduce the plastic footprint and to this end, in 2023, 115 tons of plastics have been transformed into pellets, which is a material that in alliance with municipal governments throughout El Salvador, FUNDEMAS and companies dedicated to the creation of plastic articles will create brooms, crates and plastic wood that can be reused by people in their daily chores.

"We have made a very strong investment to work in alliance with municipalities, to work with local business owners of Lake Ilopango, with recyclers, people who live from recycling, to clean the basin of Lake Ilopango. And in the end what we have achieved is, for us it was impressive, we had set a goal of 50 tons per year, and this year we were able to collect for recycling 115 tons of plastic in Lake Ilopango. This allows us to almost cover Diana's plastic footprint, which is 130 tons this year", explained Núñez.

With these results, DIANA is getting closer and closer to its goal of plastic neutrality, which means that all the plastic footprint generated by the company is recycled. The company currently recycles 88% of its waste and has set a 3-year deadline to reach 95% of all waste generated.

The plastics that are collected will then be transformed into articles of daily use for people.

In another aspect, an important part of the supply chain are the vendors of the products, which are the final point so that salvadorans and foreigners can consume the edible variety that DIANA has, therefore, the company supports the communities through the Programa Constructoras de Negocios.

"In the Surf City area we realized that there were many small points of sale, but as we know that this area is having an accelerated development, we knew we had to support them so that they could develop quickly and stop having a subsistence business and become a microenterprise", said the spokesperson of DIANA, about the beginnings of this initiative.

DIANA has supported several women entrepreneurs in transforming their businesses into microenterprises through training in Surf City.

The company also sought to create an alliance with Voces Vitales, which seeks to help women become agents of change in their places of residence. The joint work of these two organizations was able to provide training to saleswomen in the Surf City and Lago de Ilopango area on how to manage their business finances, personal finances, and how to work on customer service, which has allowed them to develop and move from having a subsistence business to having a microenterprise.

LOCALITO is an initiative that helps women to become microentrepreneurs, thus boosting the local economy of their communities.

This program is already impacting 320 women in the Surf City area.  This is the work that DIANA is doing to boost the salvadoran economy through the small businesses of salvadoran women.

In addition, DIANA is also covering food producers thanks to its work with the Cooperativa San Carlos in Aguilares, who are in charge of supplying bananas to the company for the creation of its ORÍGENES product, which is DIANA's most natural edible.

DIANA supports farmers to be able to plant good quality bananas, which are then used in the creation of their products.

"Another of the things that we felt was a necessity, is to focus on the agricultural area, because our products come from the land and we want to buy local, so we can help these small producers develop", said Luis Núñez.

All banana production harvested by the producers is purchased by DIANA.

This initiative is positively impacting more than 500 people in the Cooperativa San Carlos, who were helped to develop the technical capacity to generate bananas with the technical data sheet that DIANA needs for its products and subsequently, all the production is purchased, which is then used to create foodstuffs, this then becomes a win-win for all parties.

This is just a sample of what DIANA does, to leave a legacy of benefit to salvadorans, with whom we seek to have more and more approaches and thus enhance their economic capabilities where they are.

Translated by: A.M