Our Vision of Sustainability
The pillars guiding Royal Canin’s sustainability journey
The health and well-being of cats and dogs is our priority, as well as promoting the positive role they play in society:
- Promoting responsible breeding and pet ownership
- Sharing our knowledge globally to better understand and care for cats and dogs, and advocate for preventive care
- Promoting the benefits of cats and dogs in human health and welfare through the Royal Canin Foundation
Guided by science and innovation, we are working to help ensure a healthier planet for future generations of pets and pet owners:
- Reducing our footprint through procuring more climate-smart ingredients
- Reducing waste and boosting circularity
We strongly believe that building a sustainable business relies on the mutual value we build with our Associates and stakeholders:
- Acting together with our strategic suppliers around the world to improve environmental and social impacts in supply chains
- Supporting our professional partners to help them operate their activities sustainably and responsibly.
- Ensuring our Associates are trained and able to articulate our global sustainability strategy starting in 2022
At Royal Canin we are finding ways across the business to help support our ambition to minimize our environmental impact.
The Royal Canin carbon reduction plan is extensive and consists of multiple pillars and efforts to reduce the brand’s absolute emissions - carbon reduction is built into our key processes and we have strong governance in place to monitor our footprint reduction.
Our work includes a focus on our nutrient-first approach which allows us to design carbon optimized recipes and use more climate-smart ingredients, as well as increasing our use of renewable energy in manufacturing, optimizing our outbound logistics, boosting circularity and reducing waste.
Our Plan:
1.
Transitioning to renewable energy, by achieving 100% renewable energy (electric and thermal) across our factories and offices by 2040. 100% of the electricity used in our production sites in the United States is from renewable sources.
2.
Procuring more climate-smart ingredients, by working with farmers in our supply chains to support efforts linked to stopping deforestation as well as to reduce and sequester carbon through regenerative and climate-smart agricultural practices.
3.
Reducing waste and boosting circularity, by continuing to increase recyclability, compostability and the use of reusable packaging in alignment with Mars’ ambitious packaging sustainability goals. Additionally, we are actively working to drive down the packaging carbon footprint by progressively integrating recycled content and through the reduction of the amount of packaging material used.
As much potential as there is to reduce emissions in our value chains, it is widely recognized by standards such as SBTi that there will be a small fraction of residual emissions that still remain.
For that small remaining fraction, we will use high-quality carbon removal credits to “net” those emissions down to net zero.
More Sustainable Packaging
As a core partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s (EMF) New Plastics Economy Initiative, and a signatory of its Global Commitment to eliminate plastic waste and pollution at its source, our vision is aligned with EMF, to support a circular economy where packaging never becomes waste. We aim for all our plastic packaging to be recyclable, reusable or compostable. To close the loop, we will also include up to 30% recycled post-consumer plastic in our plastic packaging - dependent on the advancement of chemical recycling at pace and scale & alignment of food safety regulations.
In the United States and Canada, we encourage the collection and recycling of selected bags via collection points. In these countries our type of bags cannot be recycled in the existing infrastructures, thus we initiated a partnership with TerraCycle® to set up collection points at different locations within the communities, including veterinary clinics, pet retailers and other points of sale and encourage consumers to return their packaging after use.
Reusable
Recyclable
Compostable
In parallel to formulation, we’re rethinking our approach to packaging, because we believe there is no such thing as a sustainable product in an unsustainable packaging.
Supporting the positive role of pets in society with the Royal Canin Foundation
Pets make the world a better place for us. Created in 2020, our Foundation finances projects that support the positive role of pets in human health and welfare.
Our purpose is:
What our people say about sustainability
"Our priority is to reduce emissions in our business. From the development of the products, the sourcing, the manufacturing and the distribution, we are engaging with internal and external stakeholders in a collective learning journey."
Cécile Coutens – Royal Canin President
"True to our science-based approach, we have assessed the carbon footprint of each of our 3,300 recipes. Now our climate ambition has led us to start one of the biggest business transformation of the last 10 years."
Marion Sarteel - Global Sustainability Coordinator
“The nutritional value of our Pet food is our top priority. We always try to combine it with the procurement of more environmentally-friendly raw materials. We will replace fish oil with algal oil in some formulas to preserve wild fish.”
Camille Usseglio – Europe Strategic Sourcing Manager
“As a vet, my love for animals is coupled with respect for the planet. With the "Go Green" programm led by our associates, we've installed beehives in our workplace with the aim of protecting the black bee, an endangered species.”
Marie-Anne Hours – Europe Scientific Communication Manager
“My job is to ensure that we have the right understanding and accuracy of sustainability data to reliably track our results. More than ever, I trust Royal Canin and its 8,000 associates to improve our societal impact on ecosystems.”
Géraldine Merat – Global Sustainability Coordinator
"We formulate recipes using raw materials selected for their nutritional benefits as well as their environmental impact. They are optimized to guarantee the best nutritional performance with lowest impact on our carbon footprint."
Geoffrey Daniel – Formulation Portfolio Manager
“Recyclability is one of our top objectives when we develop new packaging. I’m very proud to support and to contribute to this journey towards sustainability.”
Anne-Laure Lebeux – Global Packaging PMO
“We strongly believe that building a sustainable company relies on the mutual value we build with and for our stakeholders.”
Fabrice Mathieu – Global Sustainability Manager
