Canna Companion Commits to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

Fact: Our planet faces massive economic, social and environmental challenges.

The United Nations has acknowledged as much, and many of the world’s countries understand that it is the duty of each and every one of us to protect our global society from these challenges. 

From preventing poverty, ending hunger, and providing clean water and sanitation to all to reducing inequities and committing to climate action, there are seemingly endless difficulties up the road. 

At Canna Companion, we have a longstanding commitment to leaving things better than how we found them. It is for this reason that we develop high-quality cannabis supplements for pets: to change the way you provide care to your companion animals. 

It is the same reason we are committing to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

What are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

Between 2000 and 2015, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were created as a framework for achieving success in a number of these areas in developing countries. However, as time went on, world leaders came to recognize that the private sector plays a key role in tackling these worldwide issues.

As a result, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were created by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. 193 countries around the world came together to agree upon 17 global goals to be attained by 2030.

These goals are meant to encourage the private sector to participate in some of the most difficult global challenges we face. The SDGs are a mission for businesses around the world to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity.

As of 2022, we are not on track to achieve these goals by the 2030 deadline, which has created an increased urgency for businesses to play an active and impactful role in delivering on these commitments.

Governments worldwide have already agreed to these goals. Now it is time for us to take action.

How Canna Companion is Doing

Our first step to helping achieve these goals was to complete the SDG Action Manager Assessment. This is a globally recognized third party assessment that evaluates our unique strengths and weaknesses in regards to the 17 SDGs.

The Pet Sustainability Coalition (PSC), a non-profit industry group that helps advance veterinary-related businesses like ours in environmental and social practices, provided us with a tailored approach. They offered benchmark evaluations to compare us to the 18,000+ other companies that participated in this report, as well as the 200+ other PSC member organizations.

This served as a starting point for Canna Companion to then develop custom sustainability strategies. With this breadth and depth of data, we have been able to understand our existing contribution, and measure our impact to make a plan of action to move forward.

This assessment helped analyze operations and policies as well as our business model for potential positive impact and risks. According to the PSC, its members are “predisposed to outperform the average companies” in overall performance against the SDGs.

We are pleased to report that our scores are above the benchmark compared to all 18,000+ companies, as well as when compared to the PSC network in both SDG 1: Ending Poverty and SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.

Next Steps

Based on our performance in SDG Assessment, the Pet Sustainability Coalition recommended opportunities of improvement that we at Canna Companion will be pursuing. 

Set Priority SDG Targets

It is easy to acknowledge the 17 SDGs and understand the role of businesses in achieving them. However, creating priorities and concrete plans of action for individual players can be a lot harder.

Our next step at Canna Companion will be to a) identify and manage our company’s contributions toward the SDGs and b) set key performance indicators to measure progress against the targets of each of the SDGs.

Develop a Strong Human Rights Policy and Code of Ethics

At Canna Companion, our employee manual includes inclusive policies, such as pronoun identification and an explicit commitment to gender and racial equity within our company culture. We have been working over the last couple of years to incorporate these changes with our vendor requirements in order to start a conversation within the veterinary and cannabis industries, and developed our Code of Ethics in 2021 to formalize that commitment.

According to the United Nations, “A human rights policy is the public expression of your company’s commitment to respect internationally recognized human rights standards.”

Our next step will include updating our company’s policies to incorporate the UN Global Compact Principles and develop a section dedicated to Human Rights. We will also be strengthening our Code of Ethics to have explicit Anti-Corruption language.

Committing to a Better Future

All of our achievements to this point have been by the grace of all our supporters, from our very first clients to our incredible team of employees and vendors. 

When we received our NASC Quality Seal, we continued the push to a better future by incorporating 100% recyclable packaging, diversity and inclusion practices, and more. Now, as we examine our impact on a global scale towards these SDGs, we know there is a long road ahead.

Still, we are proud to prioritize the commitment to ending poverty and integrating sustainability as core tenets of our business. As we set goals and track our progress with 18,000+ other companies worldwide, we hope you’ll follow along and hold us – and other businesses you patronize – accountable. 

To learn more about Canna Companion’s sustainability impact, visit our commitment page.