Our Spirit of Progress targets

underpin our ongoing ESG action plan to create a more inclusive and sustainable world and are aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.'

Our targets

"At Diageo we manage our business for the long term, and we have always believed in doing business the right way.

It is a powerful motivating force for our people and a powerful differentiator with our partners, customers and stakeholders. That is why we all must remain fully committed to our Spirit of Progress ambitions." - Debra Crew, CEO, Diageo

Spirit of Progress targets

Performance against our Spirit of Progress targets

Our ESG priorities

When we launched Spirit of Progress in 2020, we set out a series of ambitious priority targets. Now we’re a few years into our journey we have taken stock, reflected on our excellent progress to date, and refreshed our focus for the critical years ahead. Our 12 priority performance targets focus on where we believe we have the greatest control to drive positive change at scale across positive drinking, inclusion and diversity and grain-to-glass sustainability.

Promote positive drinking

Our ambition is to change the way people drink for the better, by engaging, educating and empowering consumers to make informed choices about drinking.

Our priority targets are targeted at areas we believe we can have the biggest reach and impact:

Scale up our SMASHED partnership, and educate 10 million young people, parents, and teachers on the dangers of underage drinking
Extend our UNITAR partnership and promote changes in attitudes to drink driving reaching 5 million people.

We know our responsibility is to educate consumers of times when consumption of alcohol is not ever appropriate, and to provide clear and transparent health information about the impacts of consuming alcohol. Since starting our Spirit of Progress journey we have made excellent progress, championing healthy literacy and tackling harm through DrinkiQ and reaching 1 billion people with dedicated responsible drinking messages. We continue to embed these crucial programmes into the rhythm of daily business

Water

Water accordian button

Water stewardship has been a longstanding priority for us and we are focused on preserving this critical resource, particularly in water stressed areas. Our priority targets across water are:

Reduce water use in our operations with a 40% improvement in water use efficiency in water-stressed areas
Replenish more water than we use for operations in water-stressed areas
Engage in collective action in all priority water basins to improve water accessibility, availability and quality and contribute to net positive water impact

We also set a target to provide access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in water-stressed communities near our sites and in water-stressed areas that supply our raw materials. In fiscal 2023 we reached our 2030 target, meaning all nine of the markets included in our target, invested in WASH projects since 2020. We will now maintain this commitment, investing every year to 2030.

Carbon

Carbon accordian button

The planet needs significant science-based action to create a sustainable low-carbon future and to mitigate the risk from climate change. Our priority targets are:

Become net zero carbon in our direct operations (Scopes 1 and 2)
Reduce our value chain (Scope 3) carbon emissions by 50%
Develop regenerative agriculture pilot programmes in five key sourcing landscapes
Continue our work to reduce total packaging and increase recycled content in our packaging (delivering a 10% reduction in packaging weight and increasing the percentage of recycled content in our packaging to 60%)

We’ll continue to work on our other targets within Spirit Progress. Data on rPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate) in our plastic packaging, recyclability of our packaging and waste reduction efforts, are available our ESG Reporting Index.

Grain-to-glass sustainability

2020 targets

We set ourselves ambitious targets to be reached by 2020 and committed to measuring and reporting on our progress in a transparent and meaningful way. Our targets were aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and support the World Health Organization's programmes on health.

Our goals reflected the holistic way we measure and evaluate our responsibility and sustainability efforts, focusing on impact, not only within our own business, but also within the communities in which we operate. We also understood the importance of working in partnership to create true scale for our many programmes and initiatives around the world.

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