Mars registers record 8% GHG emissions reduction

25 / 07 / 2024

By Marwa Nassar - -

Mars has announced registering a record 8% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction against its 2015 baseline across its full value chain in 2023 alone.

The 2023 Mars Sustainable in a Generation Report, highlighted notable progress toward its goal of achieving net zero by 2050.

Since 2015, GHG emissions in the company’s value chain have been reduced by 16% (or 5.7 million metric tons — the equivalent GHG emissions generated by more than 1.3 million gasoline-powered automobiles in a year1), while growing the business more than 60% to over $50 billion.

When Mars published the Mars Net Zero Roadmap in 2023, the company committed to investing more than $1 billion over three years – and continuing to commit financial resources as needed until net zero is achieved.

Poul Weihrauch, Mars CEO, said “Last year, we published our Net Zero Roadmap promising to accelerate our carbon reductions, and with this year’s results, we are delivering on our business strategy to continue to grow while reducing our carbon emissions. We still have a long way to go, but we will continue to follow the science and show how a responsible business can both do well and do good.” 

With almost 60% of the company’s value chain GHG footprint coming from agricultural ingredients, Mars is scaling up new climate smart agriculture initiatives to drive continued decarbonization. These initiatives aim to improve soil health and farm resilience — while providing critical financial support and training for farmers to accelerate the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices.

Barry Parkin, Mars Chief Sustainability and Procurement Officer, said “Our latest carbon reductions show we are on track to deliver a 50% reduction by 2030. While we’re proud of this progress, we know we have more work to do, and we look forward to continuing to scale our progress. It is critically important to strengthen our programs with farmers to help the transition to climate smart and regenerative agriculture.”

Mars latest investments to scaling climate smart agriculture include working with partners to establish a grower-centric program to support 1,900 farmers in four US States, and Poland to deploy climate smart agriculture methods and focus on crops such as corn, soy and wheat across more than 1.2 million acres of cropland, for Mars pet food brands such as PEDIGREE and IAMS.

The investments also also include extending a partnership between Mars brand Royal Canin and Soil Capital, Mars will provide financial support to close to 250 farmers in France and Belgium and to date, the partnership has provided support to farmers across 300,000 hectares of farmland.

The investments also aim at Continuing to support the Next Generation Soil program in Mexico and Brazil in collaboration with CIMMYT (Mexico) and Producing Right (Brazil). Through this program, Mars has already equipped 100 corn producers with the tools and knowledge to increase productivity, optimize the use of resources, and respond to the consequences of climate change, such as water scarcity and lower crop yields.

The program also encourages new regenerative agriculture practices to protect the health of the soil, optimize the use of resources, and promote good productivity in grain production.

A recently announced sustainable dairy plan, Moo’ving Dairy Forward, that commits to a $47 million investment over three years as part the company’s new climate-first approach to dairy sourcing to reduce the carbon footprint of dairy with partners Fonterra, Land O’Lakes, Interfood and FrieslandCampina.