Background
As part of our Sustainable in a Generation (SiG) Plan, our Healthy Planet ambition is to reduce our environmental impacts in line with what science says is necessary to keep the planet healthy. Within our direct operations, this means achieving a zero carbon footprint, eliminating the impacts of waste, and ensuring that our water use is at sustainable levels by 2040. The more our business grows, the more of a challenge this will become. Our goal is to reduce total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from our facilities by at least 3% each year (from a 2007 base), regardless of business growth. Our policy is to send no operational waste to landfill from our factories, with this milestone being achieved in December 2015.
At Mars, Incorporated, our Five Principles are the foundation of our approach to Facility Sustainability. While we are required to meet environmental legal requirements everywhere we operate (as well as other standards, internal and external) our aim is to go beyond mere legal compliance by continuously improving our environmental management and performance through our Global Environment Management Standards, and related Risk Management and Control Standards.
Approach
This Facility Sustainability approach summarizes relevant public positions and internal policies and standards, to provide an overview of environmental management in our facilities.
We will communicate our Health, Safety and Environmental policy by ensuring it is displayed at each Mars facility, and apply it by:
- Providing strong governance through a Mars Leadership Team Health, Safety and Environmental sponsor, a Global Health, Safety and Environment Leadership Team and other competent environmental resources.
- Providing the necessary resources to build capability and competence to effectively manage environmental risks, through standards and audit processes.
- Implementing an effective and documented Environmental Management System and continually reviewing and improving it.
- Identifying environmental hazards and assessing risks, resolving them in a timely way to ensure they are minimized, avoided or adequately controlled.
- Setting objectives, targets and plans that continually reduce environmental risks and hazards.
- Ensuring our facilities and equipment are designed, installed, operated and maintained in an environmentally safe manner.
- Ensuring Associates and others who work with us are competent to fulfil their tasks through the provision of supervision, information, instruction and training.
- Empowering Associates and others working with us to stop anyone on site from inadvertently or deliberately breaking environmental procedures or standards and providing arrangements to consult with and enable Associates and others working with us to raise environmental issues and contribute to their resolution.
In return, Mars expects all Associates, suppliers and visitors on company business to conduct themselves in an environmentally safe manner (whether on or off company property), to comply with all applicable Mars policies and promptly report any environmental hazard(s).
Facilities Management
One key information source is our Global Facilities Manual which guides the design of new facilities and helps to deliver the four pillars of our SiG program.
- Operational efficiency: Driving down energy, water and waste by changing behavior and practices.
- Capital efficiency: Investing in more efficient equipment and processes.
- New technology: Developing and deploying innovations that enable step change.
- Renewable energy: Working with partners to deploy renewable energy.
Guided by what we have learned from the most successful improvement initiatives implemented in Mars factories over a five-year period, our Confectionery, Petcare and Food segments have developed SiG playbooks. These detail the operational and capital efficiency activities that production facilities should follow to reduce their energy, water and waste impacts. It is our intention to ensure these activities are included in the operational and equipment design scope of new facilities, to optimize their efficiency from the start of production operations.
Our intention is to develop all new green-field facilities in line with Mars’ commitment to eliminate facility fossil energy use before 2040. On- and off-site renewable energy solutions for site electrical and thermal energy requirements should be investigated as part of the facility development process, with the help of the Corporate Renewable Energy Team.
All significant Mars construction and new facility building projects (>1000m2) will pursue LEED. Offices will target LEED Gold certification, while production and other buildings will target Silver under LEED V4. Our public approach to Refrigeration prioritizes the selection of natural refrigerants and commits Mars to reduce the environmental impacts of new and existing refrigeration systems.
Mars has global standards in place intended to ensure our manufacturing facilities’ engineering, maintenance and production teams successfully implement our policies, commitments and procedures for environmental impacts including air and water quality, and waste management.
Suppliers to our facilities
Our Supplier Code of Conduct requires each supplier, including third-party manufacturers, to comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations, and to continuously strive to improve environmental performance.
The Code also contains additional guidance to encourage suppliers to document and maintain environmental compliance records; properly handle, store and dispose of hazardous materials and wastes; ensure staff are informed and trained on environmental management, and minimize and monitor their impact on the environment where possible by reducing GHG emissions, increasing energy efficiency, and reducing and recycling natural resources including water and paper / packaging materials.
New projects, products, raw materials and packaging supplied to our facilities
Our Project Review Process (PRP) is a robust review system that addresses environmental and sustainability aspects and impacts associated with projects or changes to Mars equipment, processes, and facilities. The PRP is designed to ensure that effective controls are "designed and built into" Mars engineering and maintenance activities.
The process requires the evaluation of environmental and sustainability risks in each phase of a project through a documented risk assessment. The process provides an early identification of risks, thorough discussion of these issues, and the application of corrective actions. The results of the successful completion of the Project Review Process include equipment, processes, and facilities that meet or exceed Mars environmental standards and regulatory requirements.
As one of the world’s leading food manufacturers, Mars has a duty to help our agricultural suppliers to produce more with less. By helping the suppliers and farmers who produce our raw materials to improve yields and crop quality, we can help improve their incomes while developing more sustainable products. This work is outside the scope of this policy, and is instead covered in a series of complementary public position statements on Mars’ impacts on Climate Action, Water Stewardship and Land Use across its value chain.
The Mars, Incorporated Packaging Design Sustainability Guidelines take a holistic approach to packaging design that includes the entire packaging system from sourcing to end of life. Our goal is to utilize the right level of product protection, which meets business needs, ensures the highest quality standards for consumers, and considers the environmental and social impacts of the package’s life cycle.
To reduce the use of virgin fiber in our packaging, we will maintain a preference for recycled fiber where feasible and where we believe it to be a more sustainable alternative to virgin fiber. The final choice of fiber will be determined by quality and food safety requirements, product specification and performance, legal requirements, and its sustainability impacts. Our approach to pulp & paper-based materials sets out full details.
Distribution and logistics operations
Transporting goods from factories to stores contributes to GHG emissions and impacts local air quality. At Mars, we use other companies to transport our products, and so don’t have total control over these indirect emissions. However, transportation directly related to our operations is included in our Sustainable in a Generation Plan, and we seek to reduce emissions from logistics as part of delivering our targets. We have three main approaches:
- Working With Others: We work with the businesses that transport our goods to share best practices and reduce transportation-related emissions. For example, on-board technologies and driver training encourage transportation contractors to improve fuel efficiency. Some operations combine deliveries with other businesses to reduce the number of journeys required. Suppliers’ progress is reviewed when we renegotiate their contracts. We also help customers understand that the way they place their orders can have a big impact on the environment.
- Improved Network Planning: We hold our businesses and partners to continuous improvement programs that increase transportation efficiency. Every business is developing three-to-five-year plans to meet our goals. By carefully planning our network, we can reduce the distance between suppliers, factories and customer warehouses — saving fuel and money while cutting emissions. Optimizing our inventory holding and storage space requirements also contributes to saving energy and costs. Beyond our own operations, we encourage our transportation partners to make fewer journeys by fully loading their trucks and containers and by using new vehicles that allow pallets to be double stacked.
- Innovation: Finally, our eyes are always on the horizon for new technologies like hybrid electric engines and biofuels that could help contribute to future emissions reduction.
Communication and external stakeholders
Mars continually engages with external stakeholders in developing and refining our sustainability programs. Collaborative partnerships with groups such as WRI and WWF help ensure we tackle the right questions and leverage pre-competitive networks to address shared challenges.
For example, our context-based water stewardship targets necessitate a collaborative approach. Mars is not generally the main water user in the watersheds we operate in or source from, and so we must work with a wider community of organizations to solve water issues. Transparency and collaboration are essential to collectively play our part in addressing complex watershed issues, as no single company can make meaningful progress alone. Recognizing the need for multi-stakeholder engagement, Mars joined the UN Global Compact and UN CEO Water Mandate in 2015, is a member of the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), and is working with partners like WRI, WWF and the Pacific Institute to advance the standards for setting context-based water targets.
Read more about our community-focused initiatives here: https://www.mars.com/sustainability-plan/healthy-planet
Responsibility and authority
Associates, contractors, and visitors all help improve workplace quality by ensuring that environmental risks and hazards are controlled or eliminated. Associates with management responsibilities are accountable to execute the Health, Safety and Environmental Policy within their areas – to ensure protection of the environment. Company policy requires immediate response to any report of an environmental incident and quick action to address the issue.
Mars relies on all associates to take direct responsibility for environmental issues within their control. They are expected to conduct themselves safely and observe Mars environmental practices. Associates must be alert to identify hazards and initiate remedial action to correct unsafe behaviors or conditions in a timely manner. All associates have the authority to direct any other associate, contractor, or visitor to stop any action that violates Mars policies or procedures. Associates or others who violate policies or procedures are subject to disciplinary action.
Review and evaluation
Mars measures environmental performance by analyzing key performance indicators, reviewing inspection reports, and auditing the environmental management system. These measurements allow us to develop objectives, targets, and plans with aims of eliminating and controlling environmental risks.
Management will periodically review, evaluate, and verify facility performance to continually improve environmental processes.
Following mergers and acquisitions, full history data for the newly acquired business are included in Mars’ impacts reporting, going back to Mars’ base year (or the first year of operation of that business if later than base year). If full historical data is unavailable, it is estimated based on available data (i.e., proportional to production).
The Mars Sites Periodic Reporting Data Manual documents and guides Mars’ global sustainability data collection activities for our facilities. It provides definitions and details for the environmental impact data we collect, and describes how associated calculations (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions) are performed.
As a due diligence measure, we engage an independent auditor to provide limited assurance of our annual facility sustainability data in accordance with the AA1000AS Assurance Standard and ISO 14064-3: Specification with guidance for the validation and verification of greenhouse gas assertions.
This policy will be updated whenever changes require it, and reviewed every two years to ensure it continues to accurately reflect Mars’ commitment and procedures.
References
This approach summarizes relevant public position statements and internal policies and standards, which include, among other documents:
• Mars, Incorporated, Health, Safety, & Environment Policy Statement
• Mars, Incorporated Sustainable Building Program LEED Policy, v4.0 May 2016
• Mars, Incorporated Supplier Code of Conduct, March 2014
• Mars, Incorporated Packaging Design Sustainability Guidelines, April 2013
• Mars, Incorporated Pulp & Paper-based Materials Sourcing & Deforestation Policy
• Mars, Incorporated Climate Action Position Statement, v1.0 September 2017
• Mars, Incorporated Water Stewardship Position Statement, v1.0 September 2017
• Mars, Incorporated Land Use Position Statement, v1.0 September 2017
• Mars, Incorporated, Global HSE Management System Standard: Project Review Process v3.0
• Sustainability Policy Document: Changes to Mars Inc. Reporting Boundaries: Policy and Protocol for Baseline Adjustment
• The Mars Sites Periodic Reporting Data Manual