petgood x sustainability

We at petgood love pets, but we also love our fantastic planet - we are driven by reducing our four-legged family members' climate impact and global paw prints. Our focus on sustainability has been the driving force behind our dog food revolution and the reason why petgood (formerly FUNCiFUR) was founded and that we launched our first product, a complete feed based on insect protein. But our sustainability work is even larger than that!

Why have we developed our products with insects?
Today, many people know that reduced meat consumption is one of the best ways to reduce their impact on the environment. But, what many do not know is that pets are responsible for 25% of global meat consumption, and owning a medium-sized dog is the same climate impact per year as owning a car. The study that forms the basis for the figure of 25% was conducted at the University of California, but in this article you can read how Markus Langeland, researcher at SLU, comments on the study from a Swedish perspective.

To change this shocking figure, we developed an insect-based complete feed, packed with high-quality insect protein, vegetables and other carefully selected high-quality ingredients. Insects require significantly less resources compared to traditional animal protein sources, such as beef, pork and chicken. In addition to being healthy for your dog, our dog food also help making our planet healthier; the insects used as a protein source require 94% less greenhouse gases, 93% less soil, 92% less feed and 80% less water compared to beef!

The use of insects both in animal feed and for humans has increased recently. We believe insect protein is the future of a sustainable planet and we are pleased to see that we are not the only ones who have opened their eyes to this revolutionary source of protein.

In addition to an innovative and sustainable protein choice, we want to do everything we can to further reduce our paw prints! Therefore, our sustainability work stretches throughout our entire business.

What about transports?
Research and data show that transport is responsible for a fraction of a food's climate footprint. In other words, the ingredients in your dog food has a greater impact on the feed's climate footprint than the distance the feed has been transported. With that said, it is still important that we design all parts of our business to make the climate footprint as small as possible. Therefore, we have chosen our partners with care to minimize transport distance and also the number of stops on the road.

Our insects come from one of the world's leading insect farms located in the Netherlands. We have chosen to work with this particular farm thanks to their expertise and long experience, as well as their animal welfare ethics. To minimize transport, we have also chosen to produce our feed in the Netherlands so that it can arrive at your door without unnecessary stops.

petgood's goal is to help dog owners in several countries in Europe make climate-smart choices through insect-based dog food, and for sales within the EU the Netherlands is an excellent transport hub that, from a long-term perspective, minimizes our transport distance and climate footprint across Europe as a whole. Our dental sticks are also manufactured in Europe, by our partner in Spain with long experience and expertise in useful snacks for dogs.

In addition to the insects, all the ingredients in our feed are plant-based, and 99.9% of all ingredients come from Europe to guarantee high quality, traceability and to minimize transport.

What do we do more?
We want our business to be permeated by sustainable thinking and our values ​​of innovation and transparency. We therefore also do this to further reduce our paw prints;

• We work against food waste by making sure that any useful feed never needs to be thrown away. When we updated our recipe, this lead to us having a lot of left-over (but still in very good condition) food of our old recipe. We then donated the remaining bags to Scala's Hundhjälp, which helps people in need and their dogs.
• We are now starting to offer delivery every two / three months on our subscriptions - in order to reduce the number of deliveries to you as a customer. To reduce food waste when subscribing, you can always tailor your subscription to exactly as much food as you need.
• We always work with partners who share the same values ​​in both sustainability and animal ethics as us. This is one of the reasons why we chose to work with the Dutch insect farm Protix, as innovative environmental thinking is also high on their agenda.

What are we working on and what can we do better?
Sustainability work is never finished - there are always pieces that can be improved. We are constantly learning new things, getting feedback from our community, and finding new ways forward. We want to be transparent to your customers in our communication and our sustainability work, and that also includes being able to recognize where there is currently an opportunity for improvement. We are currently working on this to become even better and clearer towards you:

• The current bags are improved from the plastic bags to new bags that are 100% recyclable.
• We work to ensure that our dogfeed contains more organic ingredients in the future

What have we learned and improved?
Our very first recipe, which we are of course also very proud of and which laid the foundation for what is today petgood, was redone in June and one of the reasons for changes in certain ingredients was because we could not get them from European suppliers. In this way, we were able to continue to offer a nutritionally fantastic product, but with an even lower climate footprint!

There is no planet B!
By switching to an insect-based diet for your dog, you are actively contributing to goals # 12 and # 13 of the UN's global goals for sustainable development.

Goal 12 is about securing structures that contribute to more sustainable consumption and production.
Goal 13 is about tackling one of the greatest challenges of our time, climate change.

If you also want your furry family member to eat healthy without it being the expense of our planet, we welcome you to our dog food revolution - because there is no planet B!