HONG KONG, 5 April 2023: Cathay Pacific strives for leadership and embraces collaboration as it takes significant steps towards achieving its sustainability goals outlined in its 2022 Sustainable Development Report released last week.
The report titled “Greener Together” reflects Cathay Pacific’s belief that driving progress towards a sustainable future requires strong partnerships and collective action.
Chief Executive Officer Ronald Lam stated: “As we enter an exciting new phase of rebuilding Cathay Pacific for Hong Kong, one of our key development areas is becoming a leader in sustainability. This means working with many stakeholders, partners and corporate customers to reconnect Hong Kong to the world sustainably. The title of this year’s report, ‘Greener Together’, reflects our determination to foster stronger partnerships to help drive the sustainable development agenda and build a more sustainable future for our customers, people, and communities.
“Despite the very difficult start to the year, 2022 saw several 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. 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
• Driving progress towards decarbonisation: As part of efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and using SAF for 10% of its total fuel consumption by 2030, the group launched Asia’s first major Corporate SAF Programme. Garnering support from eight launch customers, the programme sends a strong signal to the SAF supply chain that there is firm interest in the region.
• Extending the carbon offset programme: First launched in 2007, Cathay Pacific’s long-standing voluntary carbon offset programme, Fly Greener, has now been extended to cargo operations – an essential part of our business. This provides our customers with a more sustainable cargo solution.
• Surpassing the target to cut single-use plastics: The airline has reached a 56% reduction of single-use plastics used per-passenger level compared to the 2018 baseline and is now launching a new target.
• Driving Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) across operations: A new and more ambitious goal is to hire not more than 65% of the same gender in senior positions by 2025. As of April 2023, the group will have a 50/50 gender split in its executive committee. It also became the first commercial airline listed on the 2023 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index.
• Promoting and enabling wellness: Covid-19 has impacted people’s well-being. The airline group introduced a week-long Mental Health and Wellbeing Festival with various activities and workshops to promote wellness and support our people.
