We are committed to use 100% recycled plastic across our brands and ranges by 2025. As part of this journey, we are supporting recycling infrastructures and exploring solutions beyond plastic.

Danone’s water brands are accelerating its packaging transformation beyond plastic and single-use materials by:

• Co-building highly efficient bottle collection systems in all countries where it operates, collaborating with government, industries and consumers to ensure no bottle is used only once
• Investing in new recycling technologies
• Exploring alternative packaging materials and taking a holistic view on their potential environmental footprint
• Developing more reuse and refill solutions – almost half of Danone’s water brands’ volumes are already sold in reusable formats

Here in Ireland, we will continue to:

• actively support the implementation of a Deposit Return Scheme to increase the Irish recycling rate to a minimum of 90%
• collaborate with expert partners across the UK and Ireland such as TerraCycle, Loop, Hubbub, The Ocean Cleanup and Plastic Patrol to accelarate our packaging transformation

• Introduced 100% recycled plastic in all evian on-the-go products in the UK
• Launched new large formats (above 5L), made with 100% recycled plastic which reduce the usage of plastic per litre by 20% to 40%
• Introduced 100% recycled plastic for all Volvic products in Germany and all evian and Volvic small formats in France

In the UK and Ireland we are committed to:

• Using no virgin plastic across its evian and Volvic bottles by 2025

Worldwide we will:

• Halve the amount of virgin plastic used
• Achieve 50% recycled plastic use worldwide
• Achieve 100% recycled plastic across Europe and 100% recycled plastic worldwide for evian’s bottles
• Achieve 100% recyclability (from 88% today)

Danone is determined to help an industry-wide transition to a low-carbon economy. This is why we pledged in our 2015 Climate Policy to become carbon neutral by 2050 across our full value chain. Our zero net carbon commitment means that we are responsible for the carbon emissions from where we source our water to the facilities that manage our packaging after consumption.

Danone’s strategy to achieve carbon neutrality is based on the following pillars:

• Reducing emissions
• Transforming agricultural practices to sequester more carbon in the ground
• Eliminating deforestation from our supply chain
• Offsetting the emissions that remain

evian and Volvic both achieved Carbon neutral certification from the Carbon Trust to the international standard (PAS 2060). This was achieved by:

• evian continuously measuring and reducing carbon emissions at each stage of their bottle’s life cycle: from the materials they use, to production, transportation and recycling.
• Volvic actions included switching to 100% renewable energy at their natural mineral water bottling site, evolving their packaging, moving to lower carbon transport alternatives and helping to protect natural ecosystems through their partnership with South Pole.

• All Danone water brands to be fully carbon neutral across Europe by 2025

• Volvic became the first Danone water brand to match every plain litre sold with access to safe drinking water in Asia, Africa and Latin America
• Signed the WASH pledge for access to safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at the workplace
• Provided €10m capital to establish the W2AF Water Access Acceleration Fund

• The W2AF Water Access Acceleration Fund (W2AF) will build on the last 12 years work of Danone
  Communities', a venture capital fund supporting early-stage social businesses solving the dual issues of water access and malnutrition. Together with Danone initiatives, the fund will contribute to bringing health through water to 50m people. The fund aims to raise €50m, with Danone providing catalytic capital of €10m.
• For every litre of water Danone sells, we will continue to help provide access to one litre of safe drinking water to people in need

Our commitment is longstanding. In 1998 the Danone Group and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands signed the first partnership agreement between a private company and a global environmental convention, leading to the Danone-Evian Fund for Water and the Danone Fund for Nature. These funds support the Convention’s work to raise awareness and promote the sustainable use and management of wetlands as a source of water.  

• Danone’s water brands have accelerated their preservation programmes in the 70 watersheds we operate in
• Began programmes requiring suppliers to set up water management plans
• Volvic announced its contribution to support the continued protection of 2 billion meters of natural ecosystems.

• By focusing on ingredients in highly water-stressed areas, reduce total water use by 25% through better irrigation management
• Full water stewardship programmes will cover 25 watersheds by 2025 and 46 watersheds by 2030
• Build preservation or restoration plans for 100% of the 55 watersheds in the highly water-stressed areas where we operate