The Cathay Pacific Group is making significant progress towards its goal of becoming a sustainability leader and has recently published its 2022 Sustainable Development Report to highlight its ongoing efforts and achievements. The report, titled “Greener Together,” emphasizes the Group’s belief that collaborative efforts are necessary to drive progress toward a sustainable future. CEO Ronald Lam emphasized the importance of working together with stakeholders, partners, and corporate customers to rebuild Cathay Pacific for Hong Kong in a sustainable way and to promote sustainable development for all. “Greener Together” reflects the Group’s determination to cultivate strong partnerships and build a more sustainable future for customers, employees, and communities alike.
“Despite the very difficult start we had to the year, 2022 saw a number of important milestones achieved in our sustainability journey. These involved yet more important steps towards developing the Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) supply chain, reducing single-use plastics in our operations and continuing to advance the agenda of wellness and diversity for our people. Moving people forward is our business and as we look ahead to the future, we are excited to continue contributing to important projects and being a positive driving force towards making aviation more sustainable.”
Key highlights from the 2022 report include:
- Driving progress towards decarbonization: As part of efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and use SAF for 10% of our total fuel consumption by 2030, the airline group launched Asia’s first major Corporate SAF Programme. Garnering support from eight launch customers, the program sends a strong signal to the SAF supply chain that there is firm interest in the region.
- Extending our carbon-offset program: First launched in 2007, Cathay Pacific’s long-standing voluntary carbon-offset program, Fly Greener, has now been extended to its cargo operations – an extremely important part of their business. This provides Cathay Pacific customers with a more sustainable cargo solution.
- Surpassing our target to cut single-use plastics: We have reached a 56% reduction of single-use plastics used on a per-passenger level compared to our 2018 baseline and are now in the process of launching a new target.
- Driving Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) across our operations: Cathay Pacific sets a new and more ambitious goal to not have more than 65% of the same gender in senior positions by 2025, and as of April 2023 we will have a 50/50 gender split in our Executive Committee. The airline also became the first commercial airline to be listed on the 2023 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index.
- Promoting and enabling wellness: COVID-19 has been especially impactful on people’s well-being. The airline introduced a week-long Mental Health and Wellbeing Festival filled with various activities and workshops to promote wellness and support to its people.
Full details of the airline’s performance and commitment to sustainable development are available in their 2022 Sustainable Development Report found here.