P&G Becomes Latest Multinational to Accelerate Climate-Action Plans

The consumer goods giant has shared a new Climate Transition Action Plan, new science-based targets and a goal of net-zero emissions — Scope 1-3 — by 2040.

Published 3 years ago | About a 4 minute read

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Today, Procter & Gamble announced a comprehensive plan to accelerate its climate action — including a new ambition to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across its operations and supply chain, from raw material to retailer, by 2040; as well as interim 2030 goals.

P&G joins a growing wave of corporate giants — including Keurig Dr Pepper and Logitech — that have recently stepped up their climate action plans. The climate crisis affects every home and family, everywhere in the world; and the latest IPCC report has made it clear that decisive action must be taken — at a much faster pace — to avoid the most significant impacts.

“We are fully committed to use P&G’s innovation and ingenuity to unlock new solutions to address climate change,” said Chairman, President and CEO David S. Taylor. “The task ahead of us is urgent, difficult and much bigger than any single company or country. P&G is tackling these challenges head-on by reducing our footprint and leveraging our scale to foster unprecedented collaboration across our value chain.”

P&G’s science-based roadmap to net zero will prioritize cutting most of the emissions across its operations and supply chain, from raw material to retailer. For residual emissions that cannot be eliminated, the company says it will use technical or natural climate solutions that remove and store carbon. The new action plan builds on P&G’s Ambition 2030 strategy with the further goal of achieving net zero by 2040.

P&G has joined the UN’s Race to Zero through the Business Ambition for 1.5°C campaign and shared its new Climate Transition Action Plan — along with two 2030 goals to pace its progress toward net zero, which have been submitted to the Science Based Targets initiative:

Reducing emissions across its operations by 50 percent
Reducing Scope 3 emissions (supply chain-wide) by 40 percent

The company says it will communicate its successes and setbacks along the way, in order to help advance collective progress.

“While no one has all of the answers on how to bring a net-zero future into focus, we will not let uncertainty hold us back,” said Virginie Helias, P&G’s Chief Sustainability Officer. “To achieve these goals, we will leverage existing solutions and seek transformative new ones that are not available in the marketplace today. This will require partnership across the private, nonprofit and public sectors, and involve every aspect of our business — from the very beginning of our products’ lifecycle to the very end.”

Decarbonizing the future through transformative collaboration

For consumer goods companies, one of the trickiest aspects of reducing Scope 3 emissions comes with the products’ use; enlisting consumers’ help in the form of more conscientious behaviors remains a holy grail for many forward-thinking brands, including P&G — which in 2019 helped to spearhead the formation of SB’s Brands for Good collaboratory, dedicated to using brand influence to make responsible consumption more attractive and attainable at scale. That same year, the company launched its Ambition 2030 plan — a core component of which was engaging consumers to help accelerate adoption of sustainable lifestyles.

Since then, P&G’s laundry brands have focused on consumer education to help reduce the largest portion of the company’s carbon footprint — the energy needed to heat water during use of its products. In the US, Tide has formed partnerships with Hanes and the NFL to nudge consumers to always wash in cold; with the Ariel brand campaigning to boost cold-water washing in the company’s other major markets, including France and India. Collectively, the two brands aim to help avoid an additional 30 million tons of carbon emissions by 2030 — more than ten times that of P&G’s yearly global operations.

P&G says its brands will continue to provide consumers with tools and information on how to make environmentally impactful changes at home effortless. The company is also working to create alliances for carbon-efficient homes, and advocating for policy solutions to decarbonize energy infrastructure.

For more detailed information about P&G’s commitments and progress, please see its Climate Transition Action Plan. To learn more about P&G’s ESG efforts, visit the ESG website or the 2020 Citizenship Report.