The latest sustainability report from Mars, the private company that sold more than $50 billion worth of snacks and pet food in 2024, paints a picture of an organization on track to hit its science-based 2030 target — but with little room to spare. Here are three takeaways for other businesses from the report.

Emissions only recently started tracking to net zero

Mars set a total emissions target in 2017, started working toward the goal immediately and had its plans validated by the Science Based Targets initiative in 2023. But it took several years for that effort to show up in the numbers. By 2021, emissions had fallen just 6 percent below its 2015 baseline, leaving the company well off pace on 2030 targets of a 63 percent cut in Scopes 1 and 2, alongside a 42 percent drop in Scope 3.

That’s because Mars, based in McLean, Virginia, had to start by working with suppliers — Scope 3 is 96 percent of the company’s current footprint — to reduce deforestation, as well as changing pet food recipes and increasing use of renewables in its direct operations, said Kevin Rabinovich, Mars’ global vice president for sustainability and chief climate officer. 

That work is now bearing fruit: the company emitted around 29 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) in 2024, a drop of 16 percent since 2015. The progress has been achieved during a period of solid sales growth.

Mars will at least land close to its 2030 target if it can maintain its recent rate of reductions. Rabinovich said the focus going forward will be on encouraging climate-smart agriculture and use of renewables by suppliers, together with continued work on deforestation. Each of those three pillars will drive around 10 percent cuts on 2015 levels by 2030, he added.

Mars will use land-based removals to hit its 2030 target

Regenerative agriculture can do more than cut on-farm emissions: Producers that integrate forestry with agriculture and use low-till practices can also help draw down CO2. In 2024, Mars deducted close to 42,000 tCO2e from its Scope 3 total to account for land-based removals it helped suppliers to implement.

That’s a sliver of the total for the year, but it’s set to grow. “The full potential is probably on the order of 10 or 15 percent of our footprint,” said Rabinovich. By 2030, that would equate to 1-2 million tCO2e annually.

Mars is not alone in planning to lean on removals to hit targets. Nestlé’s net-zero roadmap, for example, sees the company subtracting 13 million tCO2e of removals from its Scope 3 inventory in 2030. 

Advocates for the strategy argue that removals are an essential component of future net-zero strategies and that working with suppliers leads to more robust changes than investing in carbon credits from outside a company’s value chain. But critics counter that land-based removals are relatively easy to reverse and should not be netted against emissions to the atmosphere, some of which are essentially permanent.

Mars guards against the re-release of land-based carbon by placing 50 percent of the removals it generates in what’s known as a “buffer pool.” The removals are quantified, but rather than being subtracted from the annual total are held as insurance in case future reversals, say by wildfire, need to be accounted for.

Longer-term, added Rabinovich, that objection will become less important because emissions will increasingly be tracked on a granular level at global scales. “The idea that you’re going to stop monitoring the farm and something bad is going to happen that’s not going to get accounted for — if that’s the system we’re expecting for in the future, we’re not going to solve these problems,” he said. “There can’t be large amounts of emissions that aren’t somehow being either voluntarily or regulatory managed.”

Weak consumer demand nixed carbon-neutral product lines

Last year saw the end of carbon-neutral claims on the packaging for Mars Bars in the UK, Ireland and Canada, as well as kitten and puppy growth products in the company’s Royal Canin line. Plans for carbon-neutral status had been announced in 2021.

“The thought was if that was a more marketable claim that would resonate with consumers and drive incremental sales, the revenues could then fund the cost of the required carbon credits,” said Rabinovich. In practice, the consumer demand didn’t materialize and the program “basically wasn’t self-funding,” he added.

Rabinovich said that the company does not have a full understanding of why the claims did not drive more demand, but noted “a much discussed and well researched attitude and behavior gap in sustainability.” Asked about climate, recycling and other environmental issues, consumers say they care. “But then you go look at actual purchasing data and behavior of consumers in stores, and it really doesn’t translate.”

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The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.​

The Global South — home to most of the world’s population — is where most of the planet’s economic growth and greenhouse gas emission growth is taking place. In the runup to COP30 in Brazil later this year, we explore how a sample of these economies are shaping climate financing.

Kenya is known as the Pride of Africa, thanks to its wildlife tourism, successful marathoners and bustling economy. And when it comes to climate financing, that moniker also rings true due to a clean electric grid and thriving climate innovation culture.

While the average electricity access for East Africa hovers around 56 percent, electricity access is at 90 percent in Kenya, with 20 percent of households using solar mini grids or standalone renewable energy systems for their electricity needs.

Thanks to leveraging geothermal resources and growing solar and wind capacity, Kenya’s grid is 90 percent clean. The government of Kenya has set a goal to reach 100 percent renewable energy generation by 2030. This goal makes Kenya stand out as a gem to locate low-carbon manufacturing, attracting companies such as Enda running shoes and East African Cables.

The major challenge in transforming Kenya’s electricity system to support massive clean manufacturing and livelihoods is increasing the reliability and capacity of the grid. The government has set a goal to expand grid capacity to 100 GW – up from its current 3.3 GW – by 2040, which could require an estimated $40 billion in investment. Last year, new regulations opened up access to private companies to invest and run transmission and distribution networks. Like in the case of Indonesia, expanding and reinforcing the capacity of the grid could be an attractive investment for both local and global investors.

A new wave for land use and food systems

The land use side of the climate equation– where climate investors and corporations often look to invest — hasn’t progressed as quickly as the energy side of Kenya: over 75 percent of Kenyan soil is degraded and forest cover remains low.

Goals to improve both exist, with the goal of a minimum forest cover of 10 percent by 2030 and strategies for agroecology that centers community-driven innovation. This is critical, as Kenya is home to a number of commodity industries and food crops that are important in global trade, including cut flowers, avocados, coffee and black tea, for which Kenya is the world’s largest exporter.

Land use thus presents opportunities to align with agroecology and regenerative principles. Special credit providers in East Africa such as SHONA Capital are increasingly supporting climate-friendly food systems’ small and medium-sized enterprises.

An investor-friendly environment for climate mitigation

There’s a plethora of climate action opportunities for retail and institutional investors in Kenya. Credit unions, known as Savings and Credit Co-operative Societies (SACCOs), are increasingly providing loans for climate-friendly activities, such as solar energy for rural customers. Reform is underway to insure SACCO deposits, which could further attract retail capital. Some SACCOs even specialize in attracting diasporic capital, tapping into the approximately 3 million Kenyans who live overseas. The diaspora can be thought of even wider than that if one includes the 350 million Afro-descendent people living outside of the African continent.

A number of incentives exist to attract investment across Kenya’s sustainable development goals, including climate action. Export processing zones provide a 10-year corporate tax holiday and exemptions on import duties and VAT for export-oriented firms; special economic zones allow investors tax holidays of up to 10 years, duty-free capital imports, and simplified licensing.

Looking ahead

Kenya is arguably the tech capital of East Africa. Nairobi is home to many startup incubators, accelerators, venture studios and venture capital funds, including those dedicated to pursuing sustainability and climate action. Foreign and domestic firms including Persistent Energy, Melanin Kapital and DRK Foundation have chosen Nairobi as regional headquarters for such activity.

Agriculture fintech providers such as Apollo Agriculture have enabled smallholder farmers to improve land productivity outcomes through instant credit. Pay-as-you-go solar providers, such as Kenya-founded M-KOPA, have helped unlock the solar market in Kenya and many other African countries. Motorcycles are increasingly electric and companies such as BasiGo are expanding electric bus networks along with charging stations along key routes.

Fixing high-emission landfills is another climate investment opportunity. Kenya hosts the largest landfill in East Africa of Dandora. Converting this landfill into a waste-to-energy operation, for example, would be a useful public-private partnership.

The opportunities for multinational and local investors to take action by leveraging Kenya’s unique climate position are abundant. Whether through sustainable bond issuances, the stock market or bank and credit union products, investors would be remiss to overlook Kenya.

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If there’s a silver lining to the backlash against sustainability, it’s this: You’re not alone in what you’re seeing and feeling.

New findings from a survey conducted by Trellis data partner GlobeScan, in conjunction with the ERM Sustainability Institute and Volans, reveal a sharp rise in global sustainability professionals’ concern about the backlash against the sustainability agenda and ESG. Globally, seven in 10 experts now say there’s a significant backlash in their country, up 13 percentage points from last year.

This shift is especially pronounced in North America, where more than 90 percent of experts report experiencing significant resistance. In contrast, nearly two-thirds of experts in Asia-Pacific say there is little to no backlash, underscoring the uneven and regionally fragmented nature of the pushback. In Europe, seven in 10 experts believe there is a backlash, while Latin America and the Caribbean (60 percent) and Africa and the Middle East (61 percent) fall in between, reflecting a globally uneven but broadly felt sense of resistance.

What this means

The surge in backlash — particularly in North America and Europe — reflects growing polarization around sustainability. In these more resistant markets, progress will require careful messaging, stronger coalitions and reframing sustainability in ways that resonate with local priorities and issues.

In less-polarized regions, particularly in Asia-Pacific, there are ample opportunities to accelerate impact, scale innovation and demonstrate the value of sustainability as a driver of economic and social resilience.

Based on a survey of 844 sustainability practitioners across 72 countries globally conducted April-May 2025.

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The first commercial-scale trial of an innovative technology for onboard capture of carbon dioxide emissions from shipping vessels has been slated for later this year.

Seabound, a U.K. startup, will install a unit around the size of a shipping container on the deck of the UBC Cork, a 5,700-metric-ton vessel that carries cement from Heidelberg Materials, one of the world’s largest producers of the building material. The vessel’s exhaust will be routed over CO2-absorbing material in the container, safely locking away a portion of the vessel’s emissions.

The trial comes at a time of mounting pressure on the maritime shipping industry, which generates around a billion tons of CO2 annually, or roughly 3 percent of the global total. The International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that regulates the sector, recently announced plans for emissions-intensity rules that would force large vessels to cut emissions by up to 43 percent by 2035.

Additional advantage

Onboard carbon capture appeals because existing vessels can be retrofitted relatively quickly and cheaply, said Lars Erik Marcussen, logistics project manager at Heidelberg Materials Northern Europe. In the coming tests, the system will capture 25 percent of the CO2 emitted by the vessel, but the technology can achieve up to 95 percent capture, according to Seabound.

Onboard capture has an additional advantage for Heidelberg: the process involves reacting pebbles of calcium hydroxide, commonly known as lime, with CO2 to produce calcium carbonate, or limestone, which is an input into cement production.

“We can take the limestone pebbles and put them straight into our cement kilns,” said Marcussen.

The UBC Cork is one of nine vessels that Marcussen oversees. If the trial is successful, he hopes to install the carbon capture technology on an additional vessel every year. The work complements capture technology that Heidelberg has installed at its cement plant in Brevik, Norway, which now captures 400,000 tons of CO2 annually.

Energy expenses

One challenge to be surmounted before the technology scales is the production of low-carbon lime. The issue is serious enough to give some experts doubts about Seabound’s approach.

“There are systems that regenerate limestone back into calcium oxide [a precursor of calcium hydroxide], but this is a very energy-intensive process that incurs significant costs, even with 100 percent green electricity,” said Felix Klann, maritime transport policy officer at Transport & Environment, a nonprofit that works across Europe. “Shipping companies should focus instead on avoiding their emissions altogether by investing in green e-fuels, electrification and designing efficient ships.”

The technology is not yet cost-competitive, but Alisha Fredriksson, Seabound’s co-founder and CEO, expects costs to come down to around $150 per metric ton of CO2 capture as the technology scales. She added that once the cost of complying with the IMO rules and the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme are factored in the process will produce savings that pay back upfront costs within one to five years.

Seabound also needs to identify sources of low-carbon lime. At present, the emissions associated with producing and transporting the lime more than outweigh the benefits of capturing CO2 from the ship’s exhaust.

“We’re working with lime companies to ensure that there is a supply of green lime for our full-scale deployments,” said Fredriksson. “We want to team up with lime companies to develop dedicated kilns as close to the port as possible, so we can reuse the material over and over and then either sequester or sell that pure CO2.”

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Like many of its competitors in retail, Sweden’s Ingka Group — the IKEA brand’s primary retailer — faces a daunting Scope 3 challenge: Value-chain emissions made up 98 percent of the 30 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) the company emitted in 2016, the baseline year for its net-zero target.

Special Series

Chasing Net Zero

Intro: A case-by-case look at corporate progress on 2030 climate goals

Profile 1: Nestlé is on track for a 50 percent cut in emissions. Here’s how (holes and all)

Methodology: How we assess a company’s progress on net zero

Yet Ingka is unlike its peers in that it has made remarkable progress toward its targets, which call for a 50 percent reduction by 2030 and reaching net zero by mid-century. In 2024, the company emitted 21 million tCO2e, putting it roughly on track for its end-of-decade goal. 

By contrast, at least half of the world’s biggest retailers don’t have a formal net-zero target at all. For example, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer — known as a pioneer in supply chain decarbonization — is struggling to deliver on its own short-term commitments.

Ingka’s secret weapon? The company’s commitment to investing in climate projects is significant: the more than $5 billion it’s spent on solar and wind projects since 2009 have accrued enough assets for Ingka to be classified as a midsize energy company. 

But this second profile in the Chasing Net Zero series — our company-by-company look at progress toward 2030 climate goals — reveals that just as important might be Ingka’s close ties with Inter IKEA, which supplies it with everything from bookshelves to Swedish meatballs. Few other retailers are as dependent on one supplier. While Ingka buys from 1,500 suppliers, 81 percent of its climate footprint comes from IKEA foods and products, according to data published by both companies. By comparison, Walmart has at least 100,000 purchasing relationships.

Ingka and IKEA are separate, privately held entities with individual net-zero targets, but their goals were developed in close collaboration and validated last year by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Senior staff from both organizations participate in the Inter IKEA Strategic Sustainability Council, which meets twice a year. 

“This is not just a sustainability transition to the sustainability team, it’s about the whole of IKEA and the whole of the business,” said Simon Henzell-Thomas, climate and nature manager at Ingka.   

This relationship provides granular insights into supplier emissions that create an advantage few others in the sector enjoy. “As a retailer, it is a huge lift to get at this data because you are the last point on a very long supply chain,” said Honor Cowen, global head of retail and apparel at consulting firm Anthesis Group.

Largest liability: Materials

Ingka manages 574 locations in 31 countries and generated $47 billion in fiscal 2024 — 90 percent of IKEA’s total sales. The retailer’s top emissions source by a wide margin is purchased goods, which made up 36 percent of its Scope 3 total in its 2016 baseline year. 

The Scope 3 emissions come from operations as diverse as cattle ranches and data centers, but the highest impact within the category, at almost 10 million tCO2e, is from raw materials. Ingka is aiming to squeeze that down to 5.5 million metric tons by 2030, according to its first net-zero transition plan, published in February. 

To reduce those numbers, Ingka will need Inter IKEA to change how its goods are designed, produced and transported. “Moving toward more renewable materials, more sustainable materials, that is going to be a huge part of reducing our footprint,” said Henzell-Thomas. 

Clues about the potential for Ingka’s progress are found in Inter IKEA’s 2024 climate report. Here are plans for three of the five materials that contribute most to Ingka’s and IKEA’s emissions:

• Metals. Reducing the steps required to manufacture products can cut emissions. IKEA is using stronger grades of steel for some products, such as its Mittzon desks, to reduce the amount of the material required. It’s also boosting use of recycled metals: The company uses a minimum of 70 percent recycled aluminum in widely available products including cabinet doors and mirrors.
• Wood. IKEA plans to switch to recycled wood for one-third of its wood products by 2030, up from 16 percent now. One sticking point is the lack of recycling infrastructure for fiberboard and particle board. The company has set up its own recycling line in Poland to produce pegboards and better understand what’s needed to scale this work. It’s also investigating bio-based glues, which help cut emissions from board production. The downside is that bio-based glues could make it harder to disassemble certain products, hindering IKEA’s and Ingka’s recycling goals.
• Textiles. IKEA is switching to lower-carbon sources for the fabrics, foam and stuffing used in bed linens, curtains, rugs, towels, sofas and mattresses. Promising developments in 2024 included curtains made of waste polyester and a sofa stuffed with felt made of fabric waste rather than polyurethane foam.

These changes will require technologies that are still emerging, along with policy changes and infrastructure investments. “We have a plan, but we also have gaps there that we’re going to close,” Henzell-Thomas said. 

Bright spot: Product use at home 

Ingka’s second biggest Scope 3 liability, at 24 percent of its 2016 total, comes from emissions generated by its customers’ use of the ovens, stoves, refrigerators, lighting and other products it sells. This is a bright spot for the company: It has met its high-level goal of cutting the impact in half by reducing emissions to 3 million tCO2e tons in 2024. The push now is to slice an additional 2 million tCO2e off the category by 2030. 

Product-level changes are a big part of this success. IKEA improved the efficiency of its entire lighting line by 90 percent simply by phasing out sales of incandescent bulbs, for example, decreasing related emissions by 57 percent from its 2016 baseline. Now the focus is on reducing the electricity used by appliances such as refrigerators and ovens. 

Ingka’s clean energy services, which help customers install solar panels or heat pumps at home, are another key driver of reductions in this category. And Ingka’s investment arm plans to spend $3 billion more before 2030 on more renewable energy installations and other key technologies for the clean energy transition, such as alternative fuels and grid-scale batteries.

Policy-dependent lever: Mobility

Ingka’s third-largest Scope 3 component contains the transport-related emissions from delivery services, as well as customer, co-worker and business travel. The retailer has reduced this footprint by just 13 percent, to 2.3 million tCO2e, since the 2016 baseline year. What’s more, emissions rose slightly between 2023 and 2024. Ingka’s transition plan calls for an additional 40 percent reduction by 2030 to 1.6 million tCO2e.

To achieve that, Ingka is investing in electric and alternative-fuel vehicles to increase the proportion of home deliveries it fulfills with zero-emissions vehicles from 40 percent to 90 percent by 2028. The retailer is also providing more pick-up locations near customers’ homes.

Ingka is prioritizing work in regions where regulatory support for a transition to zero-emissions vehicles is more favorable. In Paris, for example, Ingka uses boats on the Seine to transport goods to distribution points where they are picked up by EVs and delivered.

Circular solution: Product end of life

Ingka’s circular economy initiatives intersect with the work IKEA is doing to cut materials emissions. These efforts reduce Ingka’s emissions related to product end-of-life — which contributed 6 percent of Ingka’s overall footprint in 2016 — while providing IKEA with a source of recycled materials. 

Ingka reported 1.6 million metric tons in emissions for product end-of-life in 2024, down 15 percent from 2016. It achieved this by expanding sales of secondhand items to a majority of stores, distributing millions of free parts to encourage repairs, refurbishing the IT equipment it uses in stores and cutting food waste. The goal is now to cut 0.3 million more tons by 2030.

Sriram Rajagopal, head of climate at Inter IKEA Group, said he was confident of hitting the 2030 goal for these emissions. But he noted that Ingka and IKEA can’t solve systemic issues, such as limited recycling infrastructure, on their own. “We need collective effort where many actors contribute to a circular economy and society,” he said.

Ingka’s investment arm is also putting $1 billion into circular economy startups. The retailer estimates that those ventures have so far recycled around 1.9 million metric tons of materials, avoiding 5 million tCO2e. 

One example is RetourMatras, which recycled more than 1 million mattresses in 2024, avoiding an estimated 90,000 tCO2e. It sells that material back to customers such as IKEA for use in new production. 

Ingka’s edge: Net-zero integration

Leaders across all levels of Ingka are accountable for delivering on emissions reductions. Ingka’s chief sustainability officer, Karen Pflug, is part of the group’s management team, which meets at least eight times annually. The group is directly accountable to Ingka’s executive board, which includes the CEO, deputy CEO/CFO and group legal counsel.

This sort of deep integration is indicative of leaders in retail sector decarbonization, said Evan Sheehan, head of the retail, wholesale and distribution practice at Deloitte. The most successful companies, he noted, share a few best practices:  

• Top executives buy into the company’s sustainability strategy and provide resources to support it.
• Teams agree on clear metrics for demonstrating the return on these investments.
• Well-defined models are developed to capture and use data to drive net-zero goals.

Ingka does all three. CEO Jesper Brodin is fond of saying that “being climate smart is also resource smart, cost smart and business smart.” 

Up to 85 percent of the privately held company’s profits are also put toward business improvements, including those designed to reduce emissions. Historical analysis suggests other retailers, including Walmart, reinvest around 40 percent of profits.

That board level support is another reason Ingka says it is poised to deliver on its 2030 goal. “We’re pleased with where we are,” said Henzell-Thomas. 

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