Greggs reports strong progress against sustainability targets and sets new commitments to 2030

Greggs has published its 2025 Sustainability Report – The Greggs Pledge – which reflects on the significant progress to date against the targets established in 2021, and sets out the evolution of its commitments to 2030.

Aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, The Greggs Pledge presents the company’s commitments to making the world a better place, centred on three key pillars – building stronger, healthier communities; making our planet safer; and becoming a better business.

The company has helped to build stronger, healthier communities by:

• Supporting more than 1000 school breakfast clubs, feeding over 79,500 children every school day.

• Reducing food waste by 40% against its 2018 baseline and increasing the proportion of unsold food redistributed to 45%.

• Maintaining over 30% of the items on its shelves and 40% of all new products as healthier choices.

• Opening 45 Greggs outlet shops to provide affordable food in areas where they are needed most.

Greggs has played their part to make our planet safer by:

• Reducing emissions intensity by 56% since 2019.

• Ensuring 100% of Greggs own brand packaging is fully recyclable, with the single exception of hot drink cups.

• Opening two eco shops and applying successful elements to over 34% of its estate.

• Guaranteeing 97% of the electricity, 47% of the gas, and 28% of the vehicle fuel it uses now comes from renewable sources. 

It has become a better business by:

• Ensuring 100% of the declared soy used in its own operations is certified as sustainable.

• Scoring 10 out of 10 in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Shared Responsibility Scorecard.

• Improving farm animal welfare by establishing its supply chain as one of the UK’s top four companies in the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare. 

• Ranking in the top 35% of assessed companies by EcoVadis and maintaining the National Equality Standard.

Greggs remains dedicated to doing good. It has revised and refocused its original ten commitments into a smaller number of more targeted priorities, retaining the same three core pillars while increasing focus on areas where it can deliver the greatest positive impact. 

Some previous commitments have become fully baked into everyday operational processes, such as keeping food waste at manufacturing sites below 0.2% and using only recyclable materials for packaging. These initiatives will now be maintained through usual governance processes. Other commitments have evolved to reflect a more nuanced understanding of the issues and the areas where the company can have the greatest impact. For example, as schools transition to UK government funded breakfast provision, the company will continue to support its network of schools by expanding its support to different times of the school day, ensuring continued positive impact for children and communities.

New commitments and priorities for 2026 include partnering with Nesta, the research and innovation foundation, to develop a method for measuring the healthiness of food sales, report performance against this measure and set a target to deliver improvement by the end 2030.

Hugo Harper, director of healthy life at Nesta, said: ‘Our partnership will help to show that public health and business success can go hand in hand. As one of the UK's favourite brands, Greggs commitment to healthier communities, together with Nesta’s expertise in designing and evaluating interventions, has the potential to make a meaningful impact on the nation’s health. By reporting the healthiness of its sales and setting targets for improvement, our work will provide further evidence on how mandatory health targets for all large food businesses, such as those announced by the government, can work for the out of home industry while making it easier for customers to buy healthier food.’

Alongside this, it will introduce a ‘Fighting Food Waste’ performance metric to its operational key product indicators and will continue to open outlets in line with its plan. In addition, it is committed to reducing Scope 2 emissions as per its net zero trajectory, to reach net zero for Scope 2 emissions by the end of 2030. It will seek to further improve its animal welfare practices and maintain a Tier 2 rating in the Business Benchmark for Farm Animal Welfare report. 

Roisin Currie, chief executive at Greggs, commented: ‘I am very proud of what we have achieved since we created The Greggs Pledge, shining a spotlight on the sustainability areas where we felt we could drive the most meaningful change and deliver a measurable benefit. The next iteration of The Greggs Pledge allows us to keep adapting to an ever changing and more complex world. However, our commitment to make the world a better place remains the same, and we pledge to continue to make the most positive impact on our communities and continue doing good.’