Cathay Pacific is taking big strides toward sustainability

As the Cathay Pacific Group continues to make important strides towards becoming a leader in sustainability, it is pleased to announce the release of its 2022 Sustainability Report, which underscores the Group’s continued commitment and progress in meeting its sustainability goals. The report, titled Greener Together, reflects Cathay Pacific’s belief that driving progress toward a sustainable future requires strong partnerships and collective action.

Chief Executive Officer Ronald Lam said, “As we enter an exciting new phase in Cathay Pacific’s rebuild for Hong Kong, one of our key development areas is to become a sustainability leader. This means working with many different stakeholders, partners and corporate clients to reconnect Hong Kong to the world in a sustainable way. The title of this year’s report, Greener Together, reflects our determination to foster stronger partnerships to advance the sustainable development agenda and build a more sustainable future for our customers, our employees and our communities.

“Despite the very difficult start to the year, a number of important milestones on our sustainability journey were reached in 2022. This included even more important steps to develop the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) supply chain, reduce single-use plastics in our operations, and further advance the wellbeing and diversity agenda for our employees. Moving people forward is our business and as we look to the future we look forward to continuing to contribute to important projects and be a positive driver to make aviation more sustainable.”

Key highlights of the 2022 report include:

• Driving progress on decarbonization: As part of our effort to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and use SAF for 10% of our total fuel consumption by 2030, we launched Asia’s first major corporate SAF program. With the support of eight launch customers, the program sends a strong signal to the SAF supply chain that there is a strong interest in the region.
• Expanding our carbon offset program: Cathay Pacific’s long-standing Fly Greener voluntary carbon offset program, first introduced in 2007, has now been extended to our cargo operations – a vital part of our business. This offers our customers a more sustainable freight solution.
• Exceed our goal to reduce single-use plastic: We achieved a 56% reduction in single-use plastic consumption per passenger compared to our 2018 baseline and are now in the process of rolling out a new goal.
• Drive Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) in our operations: We have set a new and more ambitious target of no more than 65% of same-sex leadership roles by 2025, and by April 2023 we will have a 50/50 gender split in our board. We were also the first commercial airline to be included in the 2023 Bloomberg Gender Equality Index.
• Encouraging and enabling well-being: COVID-19 has had a particular impact on people’s well-being. We have launched a week-long Mental Health and Wellbeing Festival filled with various activities and workshops to promote wellbeing and support our employees.

Source: News Network