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The Gunther Report

Inside Mars' science-based quest for sustainability

<p>The company talks more about why it&#39;s setting a zero emissions goal for its offices and factories by 2040, and how its sustainable sourcing goals could have a big impact on the way cocoa is grown.</p>

When it comes to corporate sustainability, Mars matters.

Mars has an impact, first of all, because of the company’s heft. With $30 billion in revenues and more than 65,000 workers around the world, Mars is the world’s second largest chocolate company (behind Kraft, which owns Cadbury). It's also the world’s largest branded rice company (Uncle Ben’s), one of the world’s largest pet food companies (Pedigree, Whiskas) and the world’s largest chewing gum company (Wrigley, Orbit, Doublemint).

The company stands out because unlike most big companies, its sustainability goals are guided by science. By 2040, Mars says, its offices and factories will use no fossil fuels and emit no greenhouse gases -- because scientists believe that greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by 80 percent by 2050, and getting to zero in the company's offices and factories will be needed for Mars to do its share. In agriculture, where it has the greatest power to influence change, the company also pledged to buy 100 percent of its cocoa, coffee, tea, fish and palm oil from sources certified as sustainable by third parties.

Owned by the Mars family, which began making candy in 1911, it's well known for its private nature. There’s no sign on the unassuming offices at its headquarters, for example. And reporters aren’t often invited inside.

Until recently, the company has been reluctant to talk about its business.

“Kind of like Russia before Perestroika,” says a pal of mine who years ago did legal work for Mars.

Photo of cocoa pods provided by Pierre-Yves Babelon via Shutterstock

Now, Mars is pulling back the curtain. Recently, I met with 36-year-old Kevin Rabinovitch, Mars' global sustainability director, at corporate headquarters in McLean, Va. Rabinovitch, who has been leading the company's sustainability work for about five years, trained as a chemical engineer and later earned an MBA.

It's important for Mars to talk about sustainability to the companies, governments and NGOs it seeks to partner with, Rabinovitch told me.

“For us to be a credible partner that people want to work with, we have to establish that credibility – and by talking about our work, thinking and goals, we help build the credibility to attract those partners,” he said.

Mars' workers also agree that communicating about these issues is important, he added.

Last year, Mars published its first sustainability report, called Principles in Action. The title refers to The Five Principles of Mars. One of the principles titled "Mutuality" is described as follows:

A mutual benefit is a shared benefit; a shared benefit will endure.

We believe the standard by which our business relationships should be measured is the degree to which mutual benefits are created.

These benefits can take many different forms, and need not be strictly financial in nature. Likewise, while we must try to achieve the most competitive terms, the actions of Mars should never be at the expense, economic or otherwise, of others with whom we work.

Interesting, no? The Five Principles are key to the culture of Mars. So is taking a long-term view, Rabinovitch said.

Although CEO Paul Michaels is the first person in the position who does not bear the Mars last name, the family still has enormous influence over how the business is run.

“Our owners think about the business in generational terms,” Rabinovitch told me. “The more you think about your business long-term, the more you naturally gravitate to thinking about sustainability.”

Mars began its sustainability work by looking at its operations. It owns about 140 factories equally divided between the US, Europe, and elsewhere. To start, it made all the usual changes -- replacing light bulbs, adding insulation, buying efficient boilers and motors, along with redesigning processes.

Aside from a landfill gas project at a chocolate factory in Waco, Texas, the company is not buying much renewable power. “We don’t think paying a premium for renewable energy makes sense, mostly because it doesn’t scale,” Rabinovitch said.

More innovative was its goal-setting. The company set a zero emissions goal for its factories and offices because most climate scientists agree that greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by 80 percent by 2050 to avoid risky climate impacts. Mars decided to overshoot that goal in its own operations because it will be harder to change agriculture, where its impact is biggest.

“We have been unequivocally convinced by climate science that this is a real issue,” Rabinovitch said. “Humanity is causing it. We should be setting a CO2 reduction goal that bears a resemblance to what scientists say your CO2 reduction goal should be.”

This may sound like common sense, but most companies can’t tell you why they set their targets where they did. Others set relative targets -- saying they will reduce emissions by X percent for each unit of sales -- rather than absolute targets. This is worse. Bill Baue, a sustainability adviser and writer, wrote an excellent article exploring this question of “sustainability context” at Mars for The Guardian.

The other area where Mars is doing what strikes me as pioneering work is in its supply chain. I’ve written before about Howard Yana Shapiro, the director of global plant science at Mars, who has led a team that is decoding the cacao genome. [See my blogpost Sweet news from Mars].

Mars buys about 10 percent of the world’s cocoa, so it can change the way cocoa is grown. It's already delivering technical assistance to cocoa farmers in West Africa, among other places. Producing more cocoa on less land reduces pressures on forests and, not incidentally, increases the supply of chocolate. Both of these things are good for Mars.

“Yields of cocoa in West Africa could be tripled what they are today,” Rabinovitch said. “No R&D. No magic pixie dust. The knowledge exists. The problem is getting the knowledge out to the cocoa farmers.”

Mars is also working with a variety of NGOs and governments to curb child labor in the cocoa supply chain, the company says here. 

There’s more than could be said about Mars -- it has set targets around a range of sustainability and social issues ranging from advertising its products on kids' television (basically, it won’t buy time on shows where more than 25 percent of the audience is under 12), getting rid of trans fats, reducing water use and eliminating waste (which it hopes to do by 2015).

Where it doesn’t have clout on its own, it is working with others through groups like the Sustainability Consortium and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

Do consumers of M&M’s or Snickers care? Probably not, but Mars will go forward anyway.

This is a company worth watching.

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