Award winning pet food manufacturer, Inspired Pet Nutrition (IPN) is celebrating another year as a Carbon Negative business, with market leading brands including Wagg and Harringtons.
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IPN is a pioneer in sustainable business practices and has always believed that the way it treats and respects the environment is critical to the way it operates.
From the outset, IPN has sourced ingredients and packaging locally; for example, in 2007 the brand patented a compostable bag to support the launch of Harringtons. In 2020, this progressive journey was cemented with the decision to become the first major pet food manufacturer in the UK to become carbon negative.
To assist with reducing the brand’s carbon footprint, IPN appointed Carbon Footprint Ltd, a leading carbon and energy management company, to independently assess its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in accordance with the UK Government’s ‘Environmental Reporting Guidelines: Including Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting Guidance’. This allows IPN to make statistical and evidence-based decisions to ensure its offsetting is not only impactful, but truthful.
Carbon offsetting is achieved by funding climate change solution projects in other parts of the world that help reduce carbon emissions by a measurable amount. Without the extra “carbon finance” from businesses like IPN offsetting its emissions, many of these projects such as tree planting, sustainable energy and education projects, simply would never have happened.
Offsetting allows companies to make a difference now, rather than pledging to make a change in the future. With IPN’s accreditation, the individual carbon offset projects it contributes to across the globe are rigorously inspected and audited regularly to assure that they are generating the correct carbon reductions.
As the UK’s first major pet food manufacturer to go carbon negative, this has been a long journey for IPN. From decades ago, where IPN used compostable packaging, to now offsetting all of their manufacturing, office and employees’ carbon footprints, including travel to and from work, this work is central to the ethos of the company.
On top of this, IPN has installed electric car charging stations at their sites. They’ve gone a further step by also subsidising the electricity, helping their employees adjust to the impact of the fuel crisis. They hope these initiatives will help encourage their employees to move towards a cleaner driving and car choices.
James Lawson, CEO, comments on the work so far: “We are delighted to be able to show we have reduced our location-based emissions for each employee’s greenhouse gas emissions by 13.6% since 2019. In addition, 100% of our purchased electricity is now sourced from renewable energy. It’s important for all of us at IPN that we continue on our positive pawprint journey and work hard to be ever more sustainable in new and innovative ways.
“We have offset 11,273 tonnes of CO2 through funding projects such as Brazil REDD+, Kenya Trees & REDD+, Uganda Borehole, North Darfur Cookstoves, Philippines Solar, Cambodian Water Purification, and India Wind Farms. All of these inspiring projects are verified against the Gold Standard VER and Verified Carbon Standard, so we know we are investing wisely.
On top of this we have set ourselves a challenge of planting one million trees, and over the past year we have planted 500 trees in the UK and 80,000 across the globe through our partnership with Ecologi. This helps sequester even more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. I’m proud to say that our business activities have therefore become Net Zero Carbon, and we will continue these practices going forward, exploring more ways we can ensure a greener planet in the future.”
Chairman Richard Page commented: “This is another landmark success in the continuation of a long journey that we will see IPN becoming an ever more sustainable pet food manufacturer.”
To learn more about IPN visit: https://ipn.co.uk/