BOULDER, COLO. — For Earth Month this past April, the Pet Sustainability Coalition (PSC) brought the pet industry together to help save nearly 19 tons of CO2 through its third annual Earth Day Rally. The month-long event inspired thousands of industry professionals to take concrete steps toward sustainability.
The Earth Day Rally is a multi-stakeholder event that received support from the American Pet Products Association (APPA), World Pet Association (WPA), the North American Veterinary Community (NAVC), Pet Industry Distributors Association (PIDA), IndiePet, Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI), and Pet Food Institute (PFI).
For this year’s rally, industry members used mobile app CO2 Hero to track their micro-actions. According to PSC, 730 industry professionals from 37 companies engaged in 10 daily eco-actions, ranging from offsetting business travel and greening their daily commute to recycling, consuming plant-based meals and reusing water bottles. These efforts helped save 18.7 tons of CO2, far surpassing the PSC’s goal of 15 tons.
The top performing companies included:
- Freshpet, saving 6.76 tons of CO2
- Earth Animal, saving 2.12 tons
- Austin & Kat, saving 1.39 tons
- Nulo, saving 1.18 tons
- W.F. Young, saving 1.15 tons
Freshpet received a $2,000 PSC Project Credit and Earth Animal received $1,000 in carbon offsets from Native Energy.
Top performing industry members included:
- Brett Duewell of Freshpet
- Liliana Bolton of Freshpet
- Lisa Diehl of Freshpet
- Maria Lange of Earth Animal
- Alexis Vance of W.F. Young
“By eliminating nearly 19 tons of CO2, the pet industry rallied to make a positive impact on our shared world,” said Jim Lamancusa, executive director of the PSC. “With Freshpet leading the way, the Pet Sustainability Coalition member network is a force to be reckoned with, posting double-digit growth year after year through its highly engaged community of action-oriented sustainability professionals. By engaging in our 30-day sprint, our participants have built habits that will last a lifetime.”
The APPA, WPA and NAVC amplified their support by donating $25,000 each to match participants’ climate points. The donations will go toward PSC’s Impact Fund and will allow the organization to support its initiatives in tackling plastic packaging and encouraging more sustainable protein sourcing practices.
Earth Animal served as a Defender-level sponsor of this year’s Earth Day Rally. Educator-level sponsors were Freshpet, Healthy Pet, Open Farm, Peel Plastics and Petco.
“This is our third year of sponsoring and participating in the Earth Day Rally and we get more inspired every year,” said Stephanie Volo, chief impact officer, Earth Animal. “It is such a fun and easy way to engage and educate the entire Earth Animal team. We love the internal drive to outdo our colleagues and tracking our progress against other companies. We are a proud sponsor, knowing that this makes it free for everyone across the industry to participate and that it supports the only such effort of action in the industry.”
Read more about sustainability efforts across the pet food and treat industry.
