Mars Incorporated has announced the launch of a new $250 million Mars Sustainability Investment Fund (MSIF) to drive innovation in sustainable agriculture, packaging, and materials. The move forms part of the company’s broader ambition to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and embed sustainability across its value chain.
The MSIF will support both direct investments and investment funds, focusing on technologies that can reduce emissions from agricultural inputs—such as fertilisers and animal feed—identified as the company’s largest emissions source. In 2024, over 70% of Mars’s GHG footprint stemmed from purchased goods and services, with agriculture being a major contributor.
The fund will also target the development of low-carbon, nutritious alternative ingredients and raw materials. In packaging, it aims to accelerate innovation in recyclable and compostable flexible plastic alternatives—a material category that remains particularly difficult to recycle using current infrastructure.
Mars CEO Poul Weihrauch commented: “Investing in innovation and getting behind start-ups that will be creating new solutions… is key to reducing exposure to future environmental risks and ultimately turning them into profit and competitive advantage.”
Packaging ambitions under pressure
According to the company, over 61% of its consumer-facing packaging is now recyclable, compostable or reusable. While progress has been made in shifting to mono-materials and paper-based packaging, flexible plastics remain a persistent challenge. These materials are less favoured by recycling schemes due to their low weight and processing complexity.
Mars, like many consumer goods firms, had originally pledged to achieve 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable packaging by 2025. However, with industry-wide difficulties in meeting this goal, the US Plastics Pact may revise the deadline to 2030.
Decoupling growth from emissions
The launch of the MSIF coincides with the release of Mars’s 2024 Sustainable in a Generation report. The company reported a 16.4% reduction in GHG emissions across all scopes compared to its 2015 baseline, improving on a 14.5% reduction in 2023. This comes despite a 69% increase in net sales over the same period, with Mars first achieving the decoupling of emissions from growth in 2019.
Mars is targeting a 50% net emissions reduction by 2030, and an 80% cut by 2050, with the remaining emissions offset by high-quality carbon credits to reach net-zero.
Much of the recent progress has been attributed to over 60 ‘climate-smart’ agriculture projects now spanning 13 crops across 29 countries. Additionally, the number of staff with long-term compensation linked to GHG reductions rose from 400 in 2023 to 2,000 in 2024.
Chief Sustainability Officer Alastair Child stressed the need for collaborative action: “Societal impact goals have to be built into business decision making. We need systemic change across supply chains, and that requires governments, industry and farmers working together. Only large-scale change will deliver on our collective goals.”
