Cathay Pacific takes major steps towards its sustainability goals

The airline’s 2022 Sustainable Development Report outlines its determination to cooperate and innovate with partners to lead change.

As the Cathay Pacific Group continues to make important strides towards becoming a sustainability leader, it is pleased to announce the release of its 2022 Sustainable Development Report, which underscores the Group’s ongoing commitments and progress in achieving its sustainability goals. Titled “Greener Together,” the report 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 together with many different stakeholders, partners and corporate customers to reconnect Hong Kong to the world in sustainable ways. 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, our people and our communities.

“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 decarbonisation: As part of efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and using SAF for 10% of our total fuel consumption by 2030, we 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 our carbon-offset programme: First launched in 2007, Cathay Pacific’s long-standing voluntary carbon-offset programme, Fly Greener, has now been extended to our cargo operations – an extremely important part of our business. This provides our 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 use 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: We set a new and more ambitious goal to not have more than 65% of the same gender at senior positions by 2025, and as of April 2023 we will have a 50/50 gender split in our Executive Committee. We 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 to people’s wellbeing. We introduced a week-long Mental Health and Wellbeing Festival filled with various activities and workshops to promote wellness and support our people.

Sources: Cathay Pacific.