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Mars, Inc., is a giant in the snack industry and also has a huge footprint in the petcare and food & nutrition sectors. Diverse lines of business usually present complex sustainability challenges. Autumn Fox, Climate and Sustainability Senior Manager at Mars Inc., joins the show to discuss the details of Mars’ Net Zero Roadmap. The roadmap outlines what Mars views as the 5 Fundamental Elements of Net Zero and offers details about how Mars is addressing major issues, like deforestation, water scarcity, and decarbonizing supply chains.
Our conversation, which also features SmartBrief Food & Beverage Content Editor Janet Kendall, delves into some unexpected areas … like Mars’ climate Boot Camp and what Autumn and her team do to solve the sustainability challenges related to pet anesthesia. Yes, pet anesthesia. This was a fun and informative episode. Enjoy!
More resources from Mars
Mars Launches New Coalition to Mobilize Suppliers & Accelerate Climate Action
Mars hails expansion of global coalition to mobilize suppliers on climate action
Highlights from Autumn Fox
Background info about the origin of Mars’ Net Zero Roadmap – (2:36)
Getting buy-in from stakeholders across the company – (3:19)
Science-based targets and other aspects of Mars’ Net Zero Roadmap – (4:14)
The 5 Fundamental Elements of Net Zero – (5:00)
Sustainable packaging – (6:20)
The impact net-zero goals have on Mars’ recipes – (7:55)
Decarbonizing a complex global supply chain – (9:18)
Agriculture and regenerative farming -(12:52)
Communications best practices with farmers – (14:41)
Tackling deforestation – (16:10)
Addressing water scarcity – (18:59)
Net zero when it comes to pet supply businesses and veterinary clinics – (20:51)
The energy Mars uses to power its operations – (22:30)
What Mars learned from looking in the mirror – (24:14)
Autumn’s bold predictions about Mars’ sustainable future – (25:39)
Climate Boot Camp – (26:55)
What otehr companies can take away from Mars’ Net Zero Roadmap – (28:36)
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Transcript
(Note: This transcript was created using artificial intelligence. It has not been edited verbatim.)
Sean McMahon 00:09
Hello, everyone and welcome to the Sustainability SmartPod. My name is Sean McMahon, and today we’re gonna be bringing you a special interview with Autumn Fox. Autumn is the Climate Sustainability Senior Manager at Mars. Mars is doing some great stuff on the sustainability front, so it helped me sort through it all with Autumn. I’m joined right now by Janet Kendall, Janet is SmartBrief’s Content Editor for the Food and Beverage sector. Janet, how are you doing today?
Janet Kendall 00:35
I’m great. Sean, how are you?
Sean McMahon 00:37
I’m wonderful. I’m excited to talk to Autumn. And I’m excited to have you join me. Real quick walk our listeners through what you do for smartbrief. And a little bit your background?
Janet Kendall 00:46
Sure, yeah. So I have the privilege of working with some really industry forward associations with SmartBrief such as FMI, the Food Industry Association and NCA, the National Confectioners Association.
Sean McMahon 00:59
Well, it sounds like you’re the perfect person to bring in to talk to Mars.
Janet Kendall 01:03
Yeah, I’m, I’m really excited about this opportunity. Because I’ve been covering the food and beverage industry in a variety of capacities for many years now. I love it, because I get the opportunity to learn how grocers and brands, suppliers and manufacturers are being innovative in so many different ways, particularly right now when it comes to ESG and sustainability initiatives.
Sean McMahon 01:24
You’re absolutely right. ESG is a hot topic across all industries. Really,
Janet Kendall 01:28
it really is. So today, I’m just really excited to be a part of this conversation with Autumn and hear all about how Mars is kind of blazing a sustainability trail, so to speak with this Net-zero Roadmap Initiative, not only within the confectionery industry, where Mars of course is a giant, but also in their pet food and their veterinary services businesses.
Sean McMahon 01:49
Yeah, you’re right. Mars has got their fingers in all kinds of lines of business. So I’m definitely excited to talk to Autumn and I’m thrilled you’re here by my side to lend your expertise to this conversation. So let’s get rolling.
Janet Kendall 02:00
Sounds good. Let’s do it, Sean.
Sean McMahon 02:08
Now it’s time to welcome Autumn Fox to the show. Autumn is the Climate Sustainability Senior Manager at Mars. Autumn. How’re you doing today?
Autumn Fox 02:16
Doing Excellent. Thanks for having me here.
Sean McMahon 02:19
Yeah, we’re excited to bring you on the show. I know Janet is particularly because she does a lot of work for smartbrief in the food and CPG sectors. We’re going to talk about Mars’s roadmap for Net Zero. Before we get into the details of your specific plan. Just give us kind of the background, what was going on at your organization when you decided to kind of put this roadmap together?
Autumn Fox 02:37
Yeah, well, as you hopefully know, Mars is a is a big company, in the food and pet areas. And so we make many confectionary, human food and pet food items that people know and love. And we’ve been on a sustainability journey for well over 15 years now. And that’s all laid out in our net zero roadmap. The context for the roadmap is that in 2021, we upped our greenhouse gas commitments to be net zero by 2050. And when we made that commitment, we knew it’s such a long term target, we’ve got to prove we’re really serious about this. And so we immediately began working on our net zero roadmap that we published so that everyone can see that we do have a plan on how to meet that commitment.
Sean McMahon 03:19
Okay, when I talked to folks in your position across other industries, they talked a lot about stakeholders within their organization. So what was that like for you? I mean, were there conversations across the company that had explained to folks why you were doing this?
Autumn Fox 03:33
Well, because we’ve had our Sustainable in a Generation plan in place for six years now. The organization knows why we’re doing this, they understand that sustainability is deeply important to how we do business. But for this roadmap, I think we engaged a broader number of stakeholders than we ever have before. More than 500 Different associates contributed to the planning and the modeling of this roadmap. So it’s not a roadmap that just came, you know, from me from the climate sustainability manager. It’s actually a roadmap that was built by the entire business together.
Sean McMahon 04:08
Well, that sounds good. It usually alludes to greater success down the road, if everyone buys in early. So let’s get into the specifics of that roadmap. What are some of the key highlights that you want to talk about today?
Autumn Fox 04:18
Absolutely. So the first thing that we really wanted to talk about was our new science based target, which is to cut our GHGs in half by 2030, compared to our 2015, baseline year, and we wanted to announce that target and we wanted to show the progress we’re already making towards our 2025 and our 2030 science based climate targets. And so we shared in the roadmap, our trajectory of emissions over the past years, and you can see from that, that we peaked our emissions in 2018. And as of 2022, we’re down 8% compared to our baseline, and so that’s the the core quantitative side of the road. roadmap. So it gives us an opportunity to share our beliefs on net zero, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what a business needs to do to be serious about a net zero commitment. And those five things we think are fundamental elements of net zero for companies. And those are including all emissions throughout your value chain, both upstream and downstream, so that you can make the best decisions, tracking your interim milestones to make sure that you’re decreasing emissions now, and really focusing on performance against those milestones. It’s important for companies to demonstrate emission reductions by peeking their emissions and reducing emissions as quickly as possible. We also need to remember that some decisions reverberate for years, particularly investment in long lived capital assets. So the decisions our factories are making today will affect our emissions profile and the 2030s, the 2040s and the 2050s. And finally, you know, we all know that we need to dramatically reduce emissions, but that there will be some residual emissions that we’re unable to reduce fully. And we need to make sure that for those, we’re using high quality, removals based credits, in line with the net zero standard in order to truly achieve net zero.
Janet Kendall 06:20
So Autumn, I know that when it comes to the confectionery side of your business, in particular, Mars kind of leads the pack when it’s coming to sustainable packaging changes. How did those changes lay into this roadmap?
Autumn Fox 06:35
Packaging is a key stage in our value chain, and it contributes about 5% of our total emissions. So it’s one of our priority areas. And in packaging, from a climate perspective, we need a two stage transition. First is our enormous priority of moving to a circular economy. We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars to redesign all of our packaging, to be recyclable, reusable or compostable, and to support the infrastructure that’s needed for that circular economy. And what’s excellent news for all of us is that in aggregate, those changes that we’re making on PACs across our portfolio will contribute to reducing our greenhouse gas footprint as well. So that sustainable packaging and our climate work really go hand in hand. And secondly, as we move these products into circular economy, materials and formats, then we actually need to decarbonize those materials themselves, we need to make sure that they’re produced with renewable energy, or if they’re biobased packaging that they’re grown with climate, Smart Agriculture, and transported sustainably. So it’s really going to take, you know, multiple phases of work to achieve that transition to fully sustainable packaging.
Janet Kendall 07:55
How has the push to net zero affected your recipes, if at all.
Autumn Fox 08:02
As you can see from the roadmap, recipe reformulation is one of our top priorities and strategies. You know, the push towards Net Zero has really prompted us to think about how we formulate, and it’s resulting in significant changes in our recipes and in our ingredient sourcing strategies. You know, when we look at the crops that are grown to produce our products, those are 65% of our footprint. And they’re one of our most challenging areas to decarbonize. So what we want to do with prioritizing recipe optimization is really innovating to source the best ingredients and the most climate friendly way that we can for a particular product. And what we’ve done is introduced carbon intensity as a key factor in selecting suppliers in fostering competition and rewarding those suppliers who have taken action early to reduce emissions. But it also means scaling up our research and development teams to look at new materials and ingredients, and particularly innovative protein sources, such as our lovebug, cat food, which uses insect protein instead of animal protein. And so it really needs to come together holistically as part of a comprehensive approach across the board to achieve net zero.
Sean McMahon 09:18
I liked some examples you’ve given about efforts to decarbonize your supply chain, particularly lovebugs. Is that what he said it was called?
Autumn Fox 09:24
Yeah, that’s the name of the product.
Sean McMahon 09:27
I’m not familiar with that one. I gotta confess, I thought I knew most of your products, but that’s not on my shelf at home?
Autumn Fox 09:33
I’m sorry. I have to inform you. That one’s in the UK right now. So you might be in the wrong region.
Sean McMahon 09:37
Okay, I got a good excuse. But getting back to that conversation about decarbonisation. So what are some of the most difficult aspects within Mars’s supply chain to decarbonize?
Autumn Fox 09:49
Top of that list is agriculture. Agriculture is very challenging to decarbonize due to the sheer breadth of the number of farmers involved. There’s an incredible diversity of the kinds of practices and technology that are needed for different crops in different growing conditions. And that, you know, work needs to be very much customized to that specific farm that you’re working on. And then agriculture has these very deep supply chains, we have many tears throughout. And that just complicates finding out who the original farmers of your product are. In particular, in agriculture, I have to say that there are some forms of livestock that are the most challenging because they involve not just one farm, but multiple farms. For example, if you have soy produced in Brazil, and then fed to poultry on a farm in the Netherlands, or if you have cows that are born on one farm, raised on another farm, and then finished on a third, those are really big challenges, because you have to not only trace that full supply chain, but also work with several different growers throughout the lifecycle of the product. The second thing that I think is also really challenging is our downstream emissions. So these are emissions from our customers who are typically retailers, and also from the consumers using our products. And those are challenging, because we just have less control once they’ve left our gates. But you know, our view is that it doesn’t matter if it’s tough, there’s still the emissions of our value chain, and we need to be accounting for them. When we account for them, we gain insight. So for example, we realized in our retail emissions that if Amazon ships mars pet food to a consumer, we account for the emission from the delivery of that pet food all the way to the consumers house. And therefore, if the consumer buys the Mars product, from a brick and mortar grocery, we also need to account for the emissions all the way to that consumers house, which usually is probably happening in a car that is not full, it’s not fully utilized. And so this helps us see that, you know, one, we do have a clear interest and need to be advocating for the general public sustainability transition. And two, we see that if we can get the product to the consumers house, in a low emission, fully utilized vehicle, we can reduce emissions pretty quickly. So it’s challenging, but you can see that already by including an indirect counting, we’ve already gotten smarter about our possible strategies and the way that our sales affect our business emissions.
Sean McMahon 12:36
And so obviously, the complexity of what you just described, about not knowing how a consumer gets your products from the brick and mortar store to their house, I never thought about that. And you know, obviously, they’re getting their car, but you have no way of knowing if it’s an Eevee, or a big old gas guzzling car or something like that. So yeah, that’s food for thought. But I want to go back to the agriculture piece of what you’re describing, I know that Mars is initiated some things related to regenerative farming. Can you walk us through that a little bit? And you know, what the response has been like from some of those farmers?
Autumn Fox 13:05
Yeah, so climate smart agriculture is one of our most important strategies. And when we talk about climate smart agriculture, we’re talking about agriculture that is reducing all of the GHGs from farming, that is regenerating soil and biodiversity. And that is increasing the climate resilience of the farms and our supply chain. So we take that holistic view, across the board, the strategies that we can use, as I mentioned earlier, they vary significantly in different crops. For example, in rice, we’re working on water management strategies that can dramatically reduce the amount of methane released by the rice paddies. And dairy, we’re working with suppliers on a host of different options in terms of how the farmers manage manure, and even experimenting with some of the more innovative emission reducing feed additives that are coming to market over the next couple of years. In crops, we have much more of a focus on regenerative agriculture, specifically, really looking at how do you update the practices to recognize and leverage natural cycles on the farm in ways that reduce emissions and increase the health and resilience of the soil that you’re farming in. And so, you know, the way that this work comes to life is through our categories and through the buyers. You know, our buyers really now have the responsibility to be looking not only at a price and quality and security of supply, but also on working with the supply chain to deliver improvements against our climate and other targets.
Sean McMahon 14:41
So what does that communication look like? I guess what I’m curious about is if you’re working with, you know, a farmer in one country, and you’re developing best practices, and you kind of sit on something you like, how is that knowledge being shared with other farmers perhaps with the same product, who might be in a different location is Mars kind of the clearinghouse for all these Best Practices.
Autumn Fox 15:00
I think there’s a lot of ways that farmers communicate. And one thing that’s clear is that for farmers to change behavior, there’s at least three things that need to be in place. First, you need to have the right agronomic advice. And that advice exactly what you’re referring to this learning journey really needs to be specific to that place to the soils on that farm, to the varieties on that farm to that particular climate that that farm is in. And so you need excellent advice that can give the right guidance on regenerative and climate smart agriculture. Secondly, you also need to have the right financial support and incentives in place so that the amount of financial risk is manageable for the farmer. And so that’s often what we’re working with is trying to find the right combination of practices and financial support that can help farmers to make the transition. And the third thing is also what you’re alluding to is this community support and the social element, right. You know, farmers need to be learning from each other, they need to be connected as a community, and to have leaders within the communities that are demonstrating that they can have profitable and efficient operations using these practices.
Janet Kendall 16:10
What about deforestation Autumn, that’s a major issue across the food industry. What is Morris doing to tackle that?
Autumn Fox 16:18
This is a major issue. And you see, it’s a huge part of our roadmap. So we’re committed to eliminating deforestation and conversion of other natural ecosystems by 2025, and cocoa, palm, and Pulp and Paper globally. And in Latin America for soy, and beef. Then we prioritized those supply chains and those regions, because they’re identified by NGOs and UN scientists as being among the biggest drivers of deforestation from a commodity perspective. So what we’re doing in those supply chains, is working towards deforestation and conversion free supply chains. And the way we do that is through our map, manage monitor framework. So first, we need to map the supply chain to understand where the product is coming from. We then need to manage that supply chain and ensure that our suppliers and their suppliers are meeting our expectations in terms of cut off dates, and other elements of deforestation and conversion free. And then we need to be monitoring ongoing to make sure that compliance is maintained. So we’re working on that for the product that we buy. But we also know that deforestation and conversion are really these large scale problems. And if we really want to stop these issues, we’re going to have to work at a larger scale than just our supply chain. And so we’re, you know, increasing our influence towards having suppliers that are deforestation and conversion free, and the landscapes that are free of deforestation and conversion through our involvement and our leadership in the Consumer Goods Forum, forest positive Coalition, which is really trying to tackle these issues at a much broader systemic level. But what does this mean for our ingredients. So for example, in cocoa in 2022, we sourced 68% of our cocoa verified as responsibly sourced and deforestation free. And that’s on our journey to 100%. responsibly sourced by 2025. So in order to know that the cocoa is responsibly sourced and deforestation free, we we map, we trace back to that first point of purchase, and back to the farm, to ensure that the cocoa that’s entering the supply chain of our supplier, and we actually map the boundaries of all of these tiny farms, in cocoa growing regions like Cote d’Ivoire, and Ghana. And this year, we’ve actually achieved our goal to source 100% of our cocoa going into our European factories as deforestation free. Obviously,
Sean McMahon 18:55
deforestation is a huge piece of your roadmap, like you said, another hot topic in environmental circles is water scarcity. And I imagine a lot of your farmers and producers use some water. So what’s Mars doing to kind of lead the way on that?
Autumn Fox 19:08
So when Mars originally set our 2025 ScienceBase to target, we actually set that as part of a broader framework to help ensure a healthy planet. And so our targets that support nature, in many ways include our climate target, and our packaging target that we’ve spoken about, but also a commitment to hold flat or land use. And two are unsustainable water use in half by 2025. Because reality is that water scarcity is absolutely a risk for our operations and our supply chains and the people in those communities. So our work on that target is focused on watersheds in our supply chains and in our operations that have the highest baseline water stress, which is essentially a measure of the mismatch between the Water being withdrawn from that watershed, and the replenishment of the watershed. So we can work on that in two ways. First is by driving efficiency and reducing water use as much as possible. So for example, that’s moving farmers on to more efficient irrigation practices, particularly in rice, where we’re working with the sustainable rice platform. And the other aspect to that is improving water recharge. And we’re doing that through habitat restoration projects that can help increase the amount of water flowing into the watershed. So for example, in Mexico, or Mars Wrigley factories are funding projects that help reforest and improve soil health, to improve that water cycle and make sure that water is flowing as it should throughout that watershed.
Janet Kendall 20:51
You touched on this a little bit earlier Autumn, how do your pet supply businesses and your veterinary clinics fit into the roadmap?
Autumn Fox 20:58
They are fully part of it. So they were not excluded. They’re deeply embedded within it. And when you think about them, so pet nutrition is in many ways very similar to a human food business. There’s similar factory operations, there’s the similar agricultural supply chains, etc. And so all of those actions that we’ve already spoken about for human food supply chains on climate, Smart Agriculture, recipe, reformulation, logistics, packaging, renewable energy, deforestation, all of those actions are exactly what our pet food business is also working on right now. Veterinary is a little bit different. We’re one of the biggest companies in the world, which is perhaps less well known, and veterinary is included in our roadmap. But it’s quite a different business structure, because it’s more similar in terms of emissions to a human health care company. And that comes with a whole different set of challenges, different supply chains, and a different model of you know, how you interact with your consumers. And so we have emissions from clients getting to and from our clinics, the emissions from the energy used in those clinics, emissions from anesthesia gases, and emissions from all the sanitary products that are used by the clinics. And so similar levels come into play on how we address all of those. Right? It’s renewable energy, it’s reducing emissions at our vet clinics. And it’s working on what sustainable procurement looks like in that hospital supply chain.
Sean McMahon 22:30
Okay, now, just pivoting real quick, you’ve mentioned renewable energy a couple of times. So how big of a piece is that for your roadmap? And what is your current I guess, footprint look like when it comes to clean energy sources? And what is the procurement plan look like going forward.
Autumn Fox 22:43
So energy is embedded throughout our emissions. And you’ll notice, as you look at the roadmap, that we’re working on renewable energy, not only on our operations, but also throughout our supply chains. So we’re changing it in our operations as quickly as we can. We’re committed to 100% renewable energy by 2040. And that’s across both electrical energy and heat energy. And today, we’re at 58% renewable electricity. This is one of the areas where that fundamental concept of remembering that some decisions reverberate for years really applies. If you replace a piece of machinery, say a hot water boiler or an oven right now, with one that uses fossil fuels, you could be burning fossil fuels for decades to come. So we have our leadership and finance teams engaged to ensure we’re planning all the way through to our 2040 targets. We also are working on how can we scale up quickly to support renewable electricity use throughout the value chain, we know that it’s it’s sort of everywhere, right? There’s electricity used in the production of fertilizer, there’s electricity used on farm, there’s electricity used in processing of ingredients, and in transportation in the retail stores and the consumers house, say to heat a packet of rice. And so it’s really embedded throughout. And we’re looking for ways to scale up quickly, and really support that transition not only in our operations, but across our supply chain.
Sean McMahon 24:14
So one of the favorite questions I’d like to ask folks in your role, Autumn is that part of compiling all the information to put together a roadmap like this means that you have a lot of data coming your way that you might not have had previously. And you might have learned a few things about your own organization. So what was one big thing that stuck in your mind, like a nugget of information that you’re like, Wow, I never knew that about Mars. And I’ve been working here, you know. So any anecdotes about that kind of lessons learned from looking at the company in the mirror?
Autumn Fox 24:44
Yeah, I think one of the things that I’ve learned is just how vast this company is, frankly, in terms of the number of businesses and it takes a lot of work when you’re a large company to make sure that everything is included in your emissions and you’re really accounting for everything you Even if they’re not on the same SAP instance, as the majority of your business, for example. And so that takes a lot of work and effort to get through. I also think we’ve we’ve been learning a lot, as I mentioned about the vet health business, right, that’s been a relatively new area for us to dive into, and increase our skills. And and, you know, I think until you get into that you don’t think about the anesthesia for your pet potentially being a greenhouse gas emission. And that’s why it’s important that we are doing that thinking, and we’re managing it so that you know, so that consumers don’t have to worry about that kind of thing and can know we’re on the case,
Sean McMahon 25:31
Gosh, between the anesthesia for pets, and the love bugs, pet food, I really got to familiarize myself better with all of our products, because you surprised me with a couple of their let’s talk about bold predictions. It’s something we always like to ask every guest here. And obviously, if you put out a roadmap like this, you’re essentially predicting that you’ll hit those goals, right? What are some of the ones that you think are the boldest or the other way? What are the some of the ones going to be most difficult to achieve?
Autumn Fox 25:55
So I think the first thing here is quite clear and obvious, we’ve said we’re going to set five year targets. And so in five years from now, we’ll be setting our 2035 targets. And we’ll be refreshing our roadmap to look out to 2035 and beyond. So that I think is very predictable, obviously, you know, our expectation is that we will be well on our way to 50% in five years. And my prediction is that we will be making more rapid progress year on year than we are now. Because when you first start working on greenhouse gas emissions, there’s a long lag time in which you’re having discussions with suppliers and negotiating projects and recruiting farmers. And it takes a really long time to actually get the results back that you can incorporate into your footprint. But in five years, we will have gotten through some of that lag time at the beginning of designing your work. And I think we’ll be really starting to see the effects of of our projects and reducing our footprint. The other thing that I’m really looking forward to in five years, is that I expect we’ll still be sharing more and more transparently what we’re learning to try to accelerate the innovation curve, and particularly to enable our suppliers to make progress as well. We’re starting that now. We run a climate bootcamp in partnership with some other big brands, that teaches suppliers how to measure their emissions and set a science based target. And I’m really excited to see what comes up that as those suppliers mature over the next five years.
Janet Kendall 27:27
Awesome. Can you can you take a little deeper dive on the boot camp? How’s that going?
Autumn Fox 27:32
The boot camp has been really successful. So far. It’s been going for about three or four years. And we’ve gone from three brands that worked together to start it Mars, PepsiCo and McCormick to well over a dozen large brands that are participating. It’s through a consultancy guide house. And they work with the suppliers that the brands recruit to really run trainings and include some individual time on specific courses that take the supplier step by step through, how do you measure your scope one and two emissions? How do you measure your scope three emissions? How do you set a science based target? And then now what we’re moving into is, how do you actually start to decarbonize and deliver against that science based target? And so in five years, I think we’ll have many more brands, and hopefully, 1000s of suppliers involved. And I think we’ll be starting to see some of those suppliers be very mature in terms of what they can do in terms of climate reductions of the footprint of products they sell to companies like Mars.
Janet Kendall 28:37
What can other companies take away from your roadmap, and what you’ve learned so far?
Autumn Fox 28:42
Our hope with the roadmap was to share it as this open source plan that other companies can use to move even more quickly than we have, I think the method that we have of showing the detail of our plans and specific areas, and the ideas that this is affordable and achievable. Those are really important for CEOs and CFOs. To hear what our leadership team did in this process that was different and unique, is that instead of asking the business, what can you do by 2030 to reduce our emissions? They asked our business, what will it take to have our footprint by 2030? Because we know that’s what’s necessary to keep the world from overheating. And the answer that they got from the business is that it’s affordable. It’s achievable. And it’s possible with the technologies that are available and are rapidly emerging right now. And I’d love to see other companies ask themselves that same question.
Janet Kendall 29:43
I have to say awesome, I’m really impressed that you just look at every single component of every part of the business like you refer to the anesthesia for the veterinary clinics to look at the GHD for that component. It’s just very impressive and when honestly seems like a huge task to undertake.
Autumn Fox 30:02
It’s an enormous task. And what that means is the only way we can do it is if the business owns it. We cannot do it. If the sustainability team owns it, it has to be owned by the business, because they know our products. They know exactly what’s going on, and they can find solutions.
Sean McMahon 30:18
So I got a question for you, Autumn. I don’t think too many people grow up dreaming of measuring the greenhouse gas emissions from pet anesthesia. And so how does someone like you end up in the role you’re at? You know, what was your own journey to sustainability? I want to hear a bit more about that.
Autumn Fox 30:33
You made me realize, Sean, I never connected these dots that there was one stage in my childhood where I wanted to be a large animal veterinarian. And now I’m working on GHG emissions of veterinary companies. No, I was really interested in biology. And through some of the research that I did, looking at the footprint of natural gas drilling in Colorado, on elk and deer, I really started to become passionate about that relationship between businesses and ecology. And I took a winding route to get here I spent time and other parts of the business and sales and r&d in procurement. But it sort of brought me back then to again being at that nexus of climate and nature.
Janet Kendall 31:18
Autumn, thank you so much for taking the time to join us and to discuss these details with us about Mars’ Net Zero roadmap initiative. This has been so enlightening for us as well as for our listeners, I’m sure and we really appreciate you joining us on the show today.
Autumn Fox 31:33
Thank you, Janet and Sean, it was lovely to speak with you today.
Sean McMahon 31:41
All right, everyone. Well, that’s our show for today. Thank you all for listening. And if you haven’t already, please subscribe or follow this show on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And as always, please be sure to share it with your friends and colleagues. Have a great day.