Open Farm releases online carbon footprint tool

Photo courtesy of Open Farm.

Open Farm, a pet food company in North America, has released 'Know your Footprint,' an online carbon experience enabling pet parents to see the carbon footprint of all Open Farm products, and identify lower carbon emitting products throughout its portfolio. This is the first of its kind in the pet industry and is in line with Open Farm's commitment to lowering its carbon footprint and full ingredient transparency.

"What I love about our new site experience is that it helps pet parents identify our lowest carbon products with easy-to-use tools like product badges and collection pages," expressed Jacqueline Prehogan, founder and chief brand officer at Open Farm, in a company release.¹ "We're also rolling out new packaging that will allow pet parents to scan a QR code on any Open Farm product to view its carbon footprint in real time. We're all-in on complete transparency, and that means sharing the emissions data for everything we make."

There are more than 163-million dogs and cats in the United States, and pets amount for 25-30% of the environmental impact of meat consumption.² "The reality is that feeding our pets is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. It's our responsibility to minimize that impact," said Prehogan. Open Farm aims to offer consumers the tools to make informed carbon decisions, so they can integrate reduction of carbon footprint into their decision making when choosing pet food. "We believe that it's our job to provide full transparency when it comes to the carbon footprint of our products; pet parents can then feel empowered to make whatever choices feel right for their pets and their families,” added Prehogan.¹

What’s more, Open Farm the Company is also prioritizing releasing low carbon options, like its recent launch of Kind Earth Plant based kibble in 2021. Also in 2020, Open Farm committed to a Science Based Target goal to reduce direct emissions from manufacturing and operations by 42% by 2030, while also minimizing the indirect emissions from raw materials.¹ The company aims to find opportunities to reduce its overall emissions and has started instilling large scale changes to its operations to reduce its footprint throughout all areas of the business.

Open Farm teamed up with an independent third-party consultant to complete a screening-level Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The LCA screening approach was created to estimate the emissions generated by each of Open Farm's products by examining every stage of the product life cycle taking into consideration ingredient production, product manufacturing, transportation, and packaging.¹ This analysis considered greenhouse gas information, including emission factor data (or suitable proxies), for over 100 ingredients used across more than 50 recipes. All these components together create a final carbon footprint, calculated per pound of product that Open Farm has shared on their website blog. While all Open Farm products have associated estimate carbon footprint numbers, 17 have been deemed "low carbon options" because they emit less than 1 kg CO2e per pound of product.

References

1. Open Farm puts carbon transparency in the hands of pet parents. News release. Open Farm Inc. February 13, 2023. February 14, 2023. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/open-farm-puts-carbon-transparency-in-the-hands-of-pet-parents-301744553.html
2. Okin GS. Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats. PLoS ONE. 2017;12(8): e0181301. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181301.