Pets, people and planet at heart of our goals toward a more sustainable future

Earlier this week I read this thought-provoking article in the New York Times on the way that businesses talk about their sustainability goals. And this made me pause and think about our sustainability ambitions. The road to making progress against them is undoubtedly challenging, complicated, and multi-faceted, but progress is possible.

I’m proud to say that sustainability is integral to business decisions at Mars Petcare. And the foundation for this is the Mars Sustainability in a Generation Plan – where, as an enterprise, we have committed to transforming our business for positive change for people and the planet. At Mars Petcare our actions to drive sustainability are firmly rooted in our purpose: A Better World for Pets – and that also means a more sustainable world for people, pets, and the planet.  

For example, we’re taking a science-led approach to cut our carbon emissions across our value chain. Mars’ climate change targets are to reduce our total greenhouse gas emissions from our full value chain by 27% by 2025 and by 67% by 2050, from 2015 levels. Across the Petcare business, we’re switching to renewable energy in our factories and veterinary hospitals and rethinking our ingredient supply chains to reduce our footprint. 

Our vision is a circular economy in which no packaging goes to waste. So, we’re redesigning our packaging for the recycling systems of today and tomorrow, and we’re testing new fully circular business models and increasingly partnering in communities on circularity. Our goal is for 100% of our packaging to be recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2025, reducing our use of virgin plastics and boosting our recycled content use. 

We work with our strategic suppliers around the world as they boost their own sustainability performance and as we take action together to improve environmental and social impacts in supply chains. For example, we’re pursuing a goal to acquire 100% of our fish from sustainable sources. The formation of strong partnerships has been a crucial part of our learning journey on this, and we’ve been working together with our suppliers to transform how we source fish. Marika McCauley Sine, our head of sustainability, will be discussing our work in more detail at The Economist World Ocean Summit next week, and I’m happy that we’ll be part of the discussions about creating a sustainable ocean economy together with other key organisations.

I’m very energised by the commitment from our leaders, Associates, and the partnerships we’ve got to help further our efforts across sustainable sourcing, innovations in packaging and circularity, carbon emissions, and health & wellbeing for pets and people. Lots to do, lots to learn but looking back to that article I’m optimistic that we’re putting into action the things that matter as we seek to achieve our sustainability goals.