PawPrints

Caring for dogs today also means thinking about the world they will live in tomorrow. Our Sustainability Statement sets out how we are working to understand and improve our impact on the environment, our people and communities, and the way we govern our organisation.

Our why

We are working towards a future where every dog can thrive in a healthy, happy and sustainable environment.

Our how

We are bringing sustainability into our strategy, decisions and everyday ways of working, while continuing to learn and improve.

Our what

Our commitments cover three connected areas: our environmental impact, our people and communities, and good governance. As our understanding grows, we will continue to develop the evidence, actions and measures that sit behind them.

Read our full sustainability statement

Our Rehoming Centre in Dublin is one of the clearest places where we can see sustainability in practice.

A 2024 SEAI energy audit, based on 2023 data, helped us better understand how the site uses energy and where improvements could be made. It identified opportunities including heat pumps, improved windows and doors, more efficient lighting and solar power.

In September 2024, 40 solar panels were installed with support from Fingal County Council’s Community Climate Action Programme. We are continuing to track what this means for our energy use and environmental impact as part of our wider PawPrints work.

We are also learning more about the other resources and natural features of the site. This includes an underground rainwater harvesting tank with capacity of around one million litres, alongside work to support biodiversity through native tree planting.

Through PawPrints, we are bringing these different pieces together to build a clearer picture of how the Rehoming Centre operates today and where practical improvements could be made in the future.
 

Before we decide where to improve, we need to understand where we are starting from.

Through PawPrints, we are building a clearer picture of our environmental impact, including the energy, fuel, water, waste and resources involved in delivering our work. In 2026, we began using Greenly to bring this information together and calculate our organisational carbon footprint. Our first focus is establishing a robust 2025 baseline, which we can build on as our data improves over time.

This work will help us identify where we can make the biggest difference, make better informed decisions and track progress more confidently. We want the evidence to come before the claims, so that the sustainability goals we set in the future are grounded in a genuine understanding of our impact.
 

The Dog Effect celebrates the positive difference dogs can make to our wellbeing, relationships and communities. It is also helping us explore new ways to work with employers who want to better support people who share their lives with dogs.

At our Paws for a Cause event at Google Ireland’s Foundry in 2025, business leaders came together to explore what dog friendly workplaces could look like in practice. Our research found that 77% of employees said dog owner friendly policies would make them more likely to stay longer in a job.

Through PawPrints, we are looking at how this kind of social impact can become part of deeper partnerships built around shared purpose, learning and positive change for dogs and people.
 

Understanding what life is really like for dogs and the people who care for them helps us make better decisions about where we can have the greatest impact.

Ireland’s Dog Census gives thousands of dog owners and dog lovers the opportunity to tell us about their experiences, while our Happy Dog Survey looks more closely at the quality of life of dogs across Ireland. More than 25,000 people took part in the 2025 Census, helping us build a growing evidence base about dogs, their wellbeing and the changing world around them.

By repeating this research over time, we can spot emerging trends, strengthen our advocacy and use evidence to inform our services, campaigns and future priorities. Through PawPrints, insight like this helps us better understand and evidence the wider social impact of our work.
 

Looking after dogs starts with looking after the people who care for them.

Belong is our approach to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging at Dogs Trust Ireland. It brings together work to help create a workplace where people feel supported, included and able to do their best work.

This includes strengthening wellbeing and resilience, improving how we work together, creating more inclusive policies and practices, and giving our people more opportunities to connect, learn and be heard.

Belong remains a distinct programme in its own right. Through PawPrints, it forms an important part of our internal social commitments and our responsibility to the people who deliver our mission every day.
 

For PawPrints to make a lasting difference, sustainability cannot sit with one person or one team.

During 2026, we have been strengthening how sustainability is owned and supported across Dogs Trust Ireland, connecting PawPrints more closely with leadership, organisational objectives, risk and the way decisions are made. Our aim is to make responsibility for sustainability part of our existing ways of working rather than creating a separate layer of activity.

As PawPrints develops, we will continue to clarify responsibilities, strengthen how progress is measured and reported, and make sure our leadership has the information it needs to provide effective oversight. This will help us turn our sustainability commitments into accountable, practical action.