Pet industry leaders are making sustainability decisions alongside many other business priorities.
Which solutions are ready to scale? Which commitments should you keep when conditions change? How much should you invest? What do your customers actually care about? And what should you prepare for next?
From November 9-11 in Boulder, Colorado, leaders from across the pet industry will come together to work through real business and sustainability challenges. This year’s sessions are designed for practical discussion, with opportunities to compare decisions, hear what others have learned, and build relationships across the industry.
If your company is working through sustainability decisions right now, here are a few questions Impact Unleashed can help you answer.
1. Which Sustainability Commitments Should Pet Companies Keep, Change or Pause?
When priorities shift, how do you decide which sustainability commitments still make sense? Hear how leaders navigated initiatives they protected, paused, or redesigned, and leave with a better understanding of how to evaluate similar decisions for your brand.
This session will examine real decisions made by industry leaders from companies like Earth Animal, Instinct, rePurpose Global, and Tyler Packaging.. Each speaker will bring an initiative that was protected, paused, reduced or redesigned and walk through the pressures they faced, the options they considered, and any consequences they faced throughout.
Before hearing what the leader decided, attendees will vote on what they would have done.
You’ll get a look at how peers have made these decisions and what happened afterward. That can give you a stronger framework for evaluating your own commitments when conditions change.
2. How Much Should Pet Companies Invest in Sustainability Right Now?
Sustainability competes for resources alongside other important business priorities. Leaders have to decide where investment will have the most value.
This session will make that tradeoff tangible.
The CEOs of companies such as EarthWise Pet, BetterBone, InClover, and Healthy Pet will receive a limited pool of hypothetical investment dollars and decide how to allocate them across people, sustainability, resilience, artificial intelligence and innovation. They’ll explain their choices, respond to changing business scenarios and revise their allocations in real time.
You’ll get to see how other business leaders weigh sustainability against competing priorities and what factors change their decisions. That perspective can help inform how you approach similar investment conversations inside your own company.
3. How do Pet Companies Get a Sustainability Solution Adopted Across the Supply Chain?
Sustainable solutions are emerging across the pet industry, from innovative ingredients and materials to more responsible packaging and products. But developing a better solution is only the beginning. The real challenge is getting brands, manufacturers, retailers and consumers to embrace it at scale.
This session will bring together perspectives across the value chain.
Panelists from companies such as MFiber, Open Farm, PetSmart, and Morris Packaging will discuss how sustainable solutions move from concept to commercial adoption, what makes the business case compelling, how partnerships and internal resources influence decision-making, and the role retailers and consumers play in accelerating change.
Attendees will gain an inside look at how adoption decisions are made, what barriers innovators must overcome, and where the greatest opportunities exist to bring more sustainable products and practices to the pet industry.
The session will help you better understand what different partners need before they can adopt a solution, what barriers you must overcome, and where the greatest opportunities are.
4. What Have Decades of Sustainability Leadership Taught Us About What Works?
Some lessons only become clear over time. Experienced sustainability leaders can offer perspective on which approaches held up, what they would do differently and how their thinking has changed.
The Long View: What Decades of Sustainability Leadership Teaches You: Veteran sustainability leaders from Royal Canin, Petcurean Pet Nutrition, and Nestlé Purina PetCare will begin with a candid, moderated conversation on stage about what they got wrong, what they underestimated, which programs survived disruption, and what gives them optimism now.
5. How Does the Next Generation See the Pet Industry’s Sustainability Challenges?
Alongside lessons from decades of experience, fresh perspectives can help the industry look at familiar sustainability challenges differently.
This session will give undergrad students a platform to share their ideas with industry leaders. Students will deliver short talks on topics such as pet food and agriculture, packaging, consumer behavior and AI. Finalists will take the main stage for presentations and a moderated discussion. A judging panel of industry and sustainability leaders will evaluate the ideas based on their strength, originality and presentation.
For attendees, the challenge offers a chance to hear how emerging professionals are thinking about familiar industry problems. Their questions and ideas may offer a different perspective on where the industry goes next.
6. How Should Pet Companies Market Sustainability to Different Customer Segments?
Pet owners do not all think about sustainability in the same way. Understanding those differences can help companies make more informed decisions about where and how sustainability shows up in customer communication.
In this session, Nolan Ether, American Pet Products Association (APPA) VP of Content & Thought Leadership, will use APPA’s proprietary seven pet owner segments to explore where sustainability matters to different audiences and where it may have less influence.
The session will help you move from broad assumptions about what pet owners value toward a more specific understanding of different customer segments.
For brands, that can inform how sustainability fits into messaging, customer strategy and broader business decisions.
7. What Should Pet Companies Prioritize on Their 2027 Sustainability Roadmaps?
Planning for 2027 means deciding which changes deserve attention now and which may have a meaningful impact on your business.
In this session will will look at what the Pet Sustainability Coalition (PSC) and industry leaders are seeing ahead. The session is being developed as a future-focused conversation informed by PSC’s State of the Industry insights and ongoing initiatives.
The discussion will help leaders identify issues to watch and consider what they could mean for their companies in the year ahead.
These are the decisions shaping what comes next for the pet industry. At Impact Unleashed, you’ll work through them alongside peers facing the same questions, and leave with ideas you can put to work in your business.