The Pet Sustainability Coalition announced the inaugural Pet Sustainability Awards, recognizing PSC-accredited companies for leadership across six categories: product innovation, sustainable packaging, ingredient innovation, social and governance excellence, environmental excellence, and industry leadership. Winners included InClover Research, Moderna Products, Vital Pet Life, Corbion, Open Farm, and others for their measurable contributions to sustainability in pet food and supplies.
- Six award categories recognized sustainability leadership in product innovation, packaging, ingredients, social responsibility, environmental action, and industry collaboration
- Sonoco Products achieved 66% post-consumer recycled content in its packaging portfolio by 2025, setting industry standards for circular design
- Alternative proteins gained recognition through Innovafeed's black soldier fly protein and responsible sourcing practices certified as B Corp
- Environmental commitments included regenerative agriculture verification, biodiversity conservation in Brazilian habitats, and net-zero targets validated by Science Based Targets initiative
- Industry collaboration highlighted precompetitive partnerships like MPM Products and Earth Animal sharing sustainability learnings across the pet supply value chain
The Pet Sustainability Coalition (PSC) named the winners of its inaugural Pet Sustainability Awards at the Starry Night Gala during Impact Unleashed, held Nov. 9-11 at the Limelight Hotel Boulder in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.
The awards are limited to PSC Accredited companies and recognize leadership in six categories: product innovation, sustainable packaging innovation, sustainable ingredient innovation, social and governance excellence, environmental excellence and industry leadership. Honors covered product and packaging innovation, corporate sustainability, individual achievement and collaborative progress.
Product innovation
This category recognized new sustainable hard goods and consumable products, as well as sustainable sourcing by a consumer brand.
- Sustainable Sourcing Excellence: InClover Research was recognized for responsible ingredient sourcing through supplier engagement and standards; a reduced environmental footprint; and traceable, transparent ingredient sourcing.
- New Sustainable Hard Goods Product: Moderna Products was recognized for its Odyssey Medium Transporter cage, cited for material selection, durability, end-of-life solutions and minimal packaging.
- New Sustainable Consumable Product: Vital Pet Life was recognized for Only Salmon Oil, cited for independent verification, consumer transparency and a single-source formulation designed for traceability.
Sustainable packaging innovation
This category recognized packaging suppliers for sustainable solutions upstream and downstream.
- Post-Consumer Recycled Content: Sonoco Products Co. was recognized for its use of recycled content, disclosure of recycled content percentages, and supply chain traceability or verification. In 2025, 66% of the materials used to manufacture Sonoco's packaging portfolio, across all material categories, came from post-consumer recycled sources.
- Circularity: Morris Packaging was recognized for source-reduced packaging and a systems approach to circular design. The company's circularity strategy connects source reduction, recycled inputs, recycle-ready design, efficient manufacturing, recovery and reprocessing.
- Recyclability: Tyler Packaging and Law Print and Packaging tied for packaging designed to be recyclable, including mono-material polyethylene (PE) or other recyclable designs across multiple product lines or formats, and for participation in take-back or recovery systems. Tyler Packaging's mono-material range is independently tested and certified under Interzero's Made for Recycling standard. Law Print and Packaging participates in its parent company's Go-Recycle program, which supports the infrastructure and services needed for material recovery.
Sustainable ingredient innovation
This category recognized ingredient suppliers for sustainable sourcing, production and proteins.
- Corbion was recognized for ingredient sourcing and production with a reduced environmental footprint, third-party certifications and alignment with PSC's 4 Factor Framework, which covers sustainable nutrition, animal welfare, environmental impact and social supply chain impact.
- Responsible Protein: Innovafeed was recognized for responsible protein sourcing in its Hilucia line, which is derived from black soldier fly. The company conducts consumer education on alternative proteins and is a certified B Corp.
Social and governance excellence
This category recognized companies for social impact, including community engagement, labor and human rights leadership, and transparent impact reporting.
- Social Impact and Community Engagement: Love, Nala was recognized for social initiatives, community engagement and stakeholder-driven approaches, including its social impact partnership with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), which PSC described as an industry first.
- Best Annual Impact Report: Petcurean Pet Nutrition was recognized for its 2025 Impact Report, cited for transparent reporting, well-contextualized metrics and data, inclusion of material topics and discussion of challenges.
- Responsible Labor and Human Rights Leadership: MPM Products was recognized for its Human Rights Due Diligence framework, workforce protections and engagement across its supply chain, including making human rights a core pillar of procurement decisions within its supplier governance framework. MPM Products is a certified B Corp.
Environmental excellence
This category recognized companies for environmental leadership, including regenerative practices, climate action, biodiversity stewardship and waste reduction.
- Regenerative Commitment: Open Farm was recognized for its product traceability systems and its commitment to the three pillars of regenerative agriculture: soil health, animal welfare and social fairness. Open Farm offers a Land to Market verified product, meaning its ingredients were sourced from land that showed improvements under a monitoring protocol developed by the Savory Institute.
- Biodiversity and Water Stewardship: Natoo Petfoods was recognized for protecting land and water ecosystems through habitat restoration. Its partnership with Oncafari supports biodiversity conservation in Brazilian biomes, including jaguar habitats and the Pantanal, the world's largest freshwater wetland.
- Waste Reduction: Nylabone was recognized for reducing waste across operations and products through lower-impact packaging, material selection and quantified waste-reduction tracking. The company moved from hard-to-recycle plastic blister packaging to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified, plastic-free, mono-material paperboard.
- Climate Action Leadership: Corbion was recognized for measuring, reducing and managing greenhouse gas emissions through a greenhouse gas inventory, integrating climate reduction goals into its business strategy, and reporting on targets, progress and challenges. Corbion has net-zero targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative and holds a CDP Climate A List rating.
Industry leadership
This category recognized companies and individuals for industrywide sustainability impact.
- Emerging Sustainability Leader: Instinct was recognized for its sustainability leadership and influence across the pet industry. The company built a detailed carbon footprint measurement system and a quantified reduction roadmap in a short time frame, allowing it to prioritize action based on evidence.
- Sustainability Hero of the Year: Jacqueline Prehogan, co-founder and chief brand officer of Open Farm, was recognized for long-term leadership that has driven measurable sustainability outcomes at Open Farm and contributed to industrywide progress.
- Industry Collaboration: MPM Products and Earth Animal tied for their participation in precompetitive initiatives, sharing of learnings and collective impact. Both companies have collaborated across the value chain to develop new innovations, tools or initiatives.
