PSC Is Running Two SuperZoo Sessions on Sustainability. The Real Test Is Whether Anyone Brings a Metric Monday.

The Pet Sustainability Coalition is showing up at SuperZoo with two events, a booth, and a claim that's repeated across all three: sustainability is a business problem companies solve together, not a values statement they announce alone.

The pattern: practical, measurable, collaborative

PSC, the Boulder, CO-based nonprofit that started with eight companies in 2013 and now works with more than 200 members, is running a Retail-Ready Sustainability Connections Hour this morning from 10-11 a.m. in the yumHub Lounge. It's a networking session built around brands, retailers, suppliers, and sustainability leaders talking through trends and solving problems together.

This afternoon at 1 p.m. Chloe DiVita, PSC's interim managing director, presents "Sustainability in the Pet Industry: Insights, Progress and What's Ahead" on the Show Floor Talks Stage. The session highlights findings from PSC's State of Sustainability in the Pet Industry 2025 Edition and previews trends expected to shape the organization's 2026 report.

And throughout the show, PSC's team is stationed at booth #3532, walking companies through how to reduce environmental impact and align with shifting stakeholder and consumer expectations. PSC members exhibiting across the floor extend that presence, showcasing advances in responsible packaging, sustainable ingredients, and ethical manufacturing.

The repeated move across all three: turn ideas into action, measure progress, and do it with other companies facing the same challenge.

"The conversations have become much more practical and focused on packaging regulations, ingredient sourcing, retail expectations, and how to measure and communicate progress in a credible way," says Alex Flynn, PSC's marketing manager. "Companies are thinking of sustainability in terms of resilience, supply chains, customer expectations, efficiency and competitive business."

What the pattern predicts

If PSC's framing holds, sustainability as a business problem with measurable solutions rather than a marketing claim, then the companies that leave SuperZoo with a specific metric to track (packaging waste per SKU, ingredient-sourcing lead times, energy spend per square foot) will move faster than the ones who leave with a pledge.

Flynn's advice to manufacturers and brands just starting: "Start with what matters most to your business and focus on measurable and realistic progress. You don't have to solve every challenge at once, and you don't have to do it alone."

That collaborative framing is the thread running through PSC's SuperZoo programming. The networking hour is built to connect people who can solve each other's problems. The booth conversations are structured around what companies can implement when the show is over. DiVita's session surfaces industry progress, emerging risks, and strategies for building resilience and long-term value.

"We hope attendees meet someone who can help them solve a problem or leave with an idea they can implement when the show is over," Flynn says.

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What would prove this wrong

If most attendees leave PSC's sessions with a general sense that sustainability matters but no specific next step, no metric to track, no supplier to call, no packaging change to test, then the programming worked as awareness-building but not as the business-problem-solving it's positioned to be.

The other failure mode: if the companies that engage with PSC at SuperZoo treat it as a compliance checkbox ("we talked to the sustainability people") rather than a margin or resilience question, the practical framing doesn't stick.

The thing to watch next

PSC exists to help the industry learn from each other and solve challenges together. The test of that claim is whether the connections made at SuperZoo, in the networking hour, at the booth, after DiVita's session, turn into actual work in the weeks after the show.

"If attendees remember just one thing after interacting with PSC at SUPERZOO," Flynn says, "it's that no company has to navigate sustainability alone. Whatever challenge you're working on, chances are another company is facing it too."

The proof isn't in the attendance numbers. It's in whether someone walks into a Monday morning meeting with a packaging supplier and asks a question they didn't know to ask before SuperZoo.

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