Major brands like ours have an opportunity to lead in accelerating the transition to a low-carbon future. A new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) shows that businesses are stepping up their use, procurement and investment in renewable electricity. While this is good news, only 17% of us have a specific target for renewable electricity and a mere 134 have committed to 100% renewable electricity use.
Mars — the company behind brands like M&Ms, Snickers, and Twix — has been around for more than 100 years. And for most of its history, it has been notoriously private, shying away from the public eye.
But during the last few years, the Mars family and company executives have started to speak out. They've started to make this shift, at least in part, because consumers are starting to care more about where products come from than they had in the past.
With more than $35 billion in annual sales, Mars Inc — the company behind brands like Twix, M&Ms, and Skittles — is one of the largest family-owned companies in the world. And it has been around for more than 100 years.
But as the company makes changes and invests in its future, there is one thing that will continue to stay the same for the chocolate giant, Mars chairman Stephen Badger told Business Insider in a recent interview.
Mars bars are taking a step towards being carbon neutral after the company that makes them signed a 20-year deal in Australia to generate 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020.
Mars, which also makes Pedigree dog food and M&Ms, said its Australian subsidiary will sign a deal with energy company Total Eren to build a solar plant in Victoria by mid-2019.
In the humid Sava region of northern Madagascar, where vanilla vines grow in the shaded canopy of the jungle, villagers guard their crop as though it were a precious metal. Well they might. Strong demand for natural vanilla, speculation, bad harvests and money laundering have driven prices as high as silver. Farmers often awake to find their vines stripped bare, carried off in the night by gangs of thieves filling orders for buyers in the far-off capital of Antananarivo, who in turn supply the markets of western Europe, the US and Asia.
At Mars, we know quality packaging lets us deliver the products you and your pets love in a safe and sustainable way. Among its many benefits, packaging helps preserve the life of our products, whether they’re on the grocery shelf or in your cupboard.
There are clear signals that the climate has changed over the past century. Around the world, people are beginning to feel the effects, from increased average and extreme temperatures, to changes in rainfall patterns, to more severe and less predictable storms. At Mars, we source key agricultural materials from countries and communities that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
The We Mean Business Coalition talked to Mars’ Barry Parkin about how acting on climate change is the right thing for future generations of the world as well as a benefit to the overall business.
