Citizenship and ESG: A Force for Good and A Force for Growth
P&G’s ability to do well is connected to our commitment to doing good, and our ability to do good is strengthened by our growth. It’s a virtuous cycle, and as a Company we’re committed to be a force for good and force for growth in everything we do.
We refer to our efforts in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), as well as our additional activities and commitments in related spaces, as “Citizenship,” which we believe is a holistic way to talk about all our efforts. We’ve built Citizenship into how we do business every day across each one of our Citizenship priorities: Environmental Sustainability, Equality & Inclusion, and Community Impact, with a foundation of Ethics & Corporate Responsibility.
Environmental Sustainability has been embedded in how P&G does business for decades. Over the past 10 years, we have reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 50%, reached zero manufacturing waste to landfill across all production sites globally, and doubled the use of recycled resin in our plastic packaging. As we look to the future, our Ambition 2030 program includes commitments that our global operations will be carbon neutral for the decade by driving breakthrough energy efficiency, purchasing 100% renewable electricity globally and using natural climate solutions to compensate for any remaining emissions. Our Ambition 2030 goals also include improving finished
product transportation emissions efficiency by 50%, making 100% of packaging recyclable or reusable, and reducing virgin petroleum plastic packaging by 50%. Later this year, we’ll issue a climate transition action plan outlining our plans toward a long-term objective of net zero greenhouse gas emissions. We’re also committed to using our voice, reach, innovation and expertise to make responsible consumption across all our brands irresistible, and we’ve recently launched a program called “It’s Our Home” to share how small actions at home can make a big difference in reducing energy use, waste and water.
At P&G, we’re committed to being a force for
good and force for growth in everything we do, as we believe brands and companies have a responsibility to society. With our Lead with Love campaign, P&G is activating the power and reach of our trusted brands to deliver on a commitment of 2,021 acts of good in 2021 that will have a lasting, positive impact on people and communities around the world, engaging consumers, sparking conversations, and inspiring people everywhere to take action and to lead with love.
Our Equality & Inclusion efforts are guided by our aspiration to help create a world where equality and inclusion are achievable for all; where respect and inclusion are the cornerstones of our culture; and where equal access and opportunity to learn, grow, succeed and thrive are available to everyone, inside and outside of P&G. We support equality and inclusion with our employees, through our brands, with our business partners and in our communities. Over the last year, we have strengthened our diversity at all levels of our Company, including our Board of Directors, and are now publicly sharing our workforce representation data at pg.com/equalityandinclusion. We have also used our voice externally to address inequality. We introduced “Widen The Screen,” a broad creative and partnership platform that enables and advocates for increased inclusion of Black creators across the advertising, film and television industries, broadening the spectrum of the images we see, the voices we hear, the stories we tell and the people we understand.
Our Community Impact work supports people and communities through trying times and unexpected challenges by being there to help with our trusted brands, which people count on to take care of their personal health and to create clean and healthy homes. We continue to provide COVID-19 relief around the world through donations of products, cash and personal protective equipment. And while the pandemic is rightfully top of mind, there are many people who’ve also faced natural disasters around the world, and we’ve responded to support those dealing with fires, floods, typhoons, hurricanes and other emergencies. Our Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program continues to provide clean drinking water to those who lack access, reaching 18 billion liters of clean water provided since the program began, thanks to the collaboration of more than 150 partners, and we’re on our way to 25 billion liters by 2025.
Ethics & Corporate Responsibility — good governance — is the foundation for everything we do at P&G, including our Citizenship work. From long experience, we know that building and sustaining a robust business depends on maintaining strong ethical, compliance and quality standards, and for more than 180 years, we’ve been guided by our Purpose, Values and Principles.
This is just an overview of our Citizenship work, and I encourage you to learn more from our annual
Citizenship report at pg.com as well as from our ESG Investor website at pginvestor.com/esg.
We continue to put significant effort against our Citizenship priorities so that P&G can be a force for good and a force for growth in the world.
Citizenship at P&G
ENVIRONMENTAL
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
Environmental sustainability has been embedded in P&G’s business for decades. We’re continually working to reduce the impact of our operations and helping make responsible consumption irresistible for people everywhere.
P&G will continue to reduce the impact of our operations and deliver superior products that make it easy to make sustainable choices with no trade-off in performance. Nearly eight of 10 people want the brands they buy to help them be more environmentally conscious.1 We launched the It’s Our
Home campaign to highlight how small actions at home can make a big difference for our planet.
(1) “It’s Our Home” Study, conducted by P&G hosted on Toluna, surveying 5,371 people, February 2021 Global average (Canada, France, Germany, U.K., U.S.)
SOCIAL
EQUALITY & INCLUSION
We aspire to create a company and a world where equality and inclusion is achievable for all, building a diverse employee and leadership base to reflect the consumers we serve, fostering an inclusive and welcoming culture, and leveraging our influence to progress equality.
This year we introduced “Widen the Screen,” a broad creative and partnership platform to increase inclusion of Black creators across the advertising, film and television industries,
broadening the spectrum of the images we see, the voices we hear, the stories we tell, and the people we understand.
Whether it’s supporting hygiene education, providing clean water, delivering essentials for families impacted by disaster, or mobilizing to help overcome the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, our goal is to improve the health and well-being of every community we touch.
In 2004, we launched the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program to help communities around the world. With an innovation that packs the power of a water treatment facility into a teabag-sized packet, families can turn dirty, potentially deadly water into clean drinkable water in just 30 minutes. Working with more than 150 global partners, we’ve provided more than 18 billion liters of water since the program began and helped transform lives by keeping families healthy, enabling education, and supporting more economic opportunity.
GOVERNANCE
ETHICS & CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
At P&G, we serve about five billion people around the world with our brands. How we serve the world’s consumers matters, and we’re committed to doing what’s right and to being a good corporate citizen. Everything we do is firmly rooted in P&G’s Purpose, Values and Principles.
We believe that strong governance practices contribute to better results for shareholders. In fiscal 2021, we created an online portal to increase transparency in ESG reporting, expanded the accessibility of our diversity data, shared reporting on our sound forestry practices, increased the diversity of our Board with two new members, and continued our ongoing work in ingredient transparency and safety.
VARIOUS STATEMENTS IN THIS ANNUAL REPORT, including estimates, projections, objectives and expected results, are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and are generally identified by the words “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “opportunity,” “plan,” “project,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “would,” “likely” and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements, including the risks and uncertainties discussed in Item 1A – Risk Factors of the Form 10-K included in this Annual Report. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.
