Mars' CEO believes the global supply chain is "broken" — and that it is companies' responsibility to fix it.
"I'm an eternal optimist ... I believe that people will respond," Reid said. "At first they'll deny, then they'll be angry, but then they'll actually help drive the change, and I can see quite a bit of that change coming."Kate Taylor: You know, for the first 100 years, we let our brands do the talking. Everybody knew M&M's, everybody knew Pedigree, everybody knew Twix, everybody knew Uncle Ben's, but not so much about, I think, the DNA of the company itself, and things have changed now in building that reputation, so we've said, we've put a billion dollars intoand we're fully committed, the family's behind it, and we didn't have to convince, you know, financial analysts it was a good idea.
I mean, right now, the global supply chain is broken. We're taking more — not Mars, but in total — we're taking more out of the planet than is sustainable. And we have to fix that. And to do that is going to take a coalition of the willing to provide that leadership to bring a momentum behind it, to mobilize NGOs, mobilize companies, to mobilize people, and to mobilize countries to solve those issues.