Developing new kinds of barley that is more resistant to climate change. Finding innovative brewing methods to reduce our energy and water consumption in our breweries. Promoting responsible drinking at Carlsberg sponsored music festivals - These and other initiatives are examples of how we integrate CSR throughout our value chain.
By doing so, we intend to bring CSR aspects relevant to our company and our stakeholders closer to our business plans and decisions. We also integrate CSR by taking the best-in-class CSR initiatives from by our local companies and sharing these across the group- such as energy saving initiatives from Baltika in Russia, water efficiency measures from the UK and responsible drinking initiatives from Denmark and Switzerland.
This year, we have set new targets for 2013 in each of the CSR areas we have chosen to focus on. The targets are presented together with the progress we made on a global and local level during 2010 in the various CSR areas. Our targets will guide our work in the coming years and underline our commitment to grow in a responsible way.
Of all our efforts, I am particularly proud that we continued to improve during 2010 when it comes to water efficiency. Our targets for water and energy efficiency are the most ambitious in the brewing industry. This is in line with our ambition to continue to be among the best in class when it comes to water and energy efficiency in our production. When we talk about water, we can see that this will be an increasingly important area when we look into the future. We will actively pursue solutions both inside and outside our breweries to manage water risks.
I am also pleased to see that we have made good achievements at some of our other CSR focus areas. We strongly reduced the number of health and safety incidents in our breweries. On a local level, many of our companies continued to be involved in responsible drinking initiatives. We see that in some areas more work is needed, and we need to provide our Group companies with tools to further local CSR implementation. This will be a priority for 2011.
During last year, our group companies also started to implement our new CSR policies in their local day-to-day business operations. In doing so, we continue to subscribe to and make progress towards integrating the principles of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in our business operations. A detailed account can be read in our Communication on Progress.
Looking ahead, we are entering the next phase of implementing our group CSR approach. For 2011, the focus will be on improving our local CSR performance as well as initiate activities to help us make progress towards our 2013 targets. An important element going forward will be to work more closely with our stakeholders in order to identify sustainable solutions together. A good example of this is developing partnerships to manage shared water risks.
At Carlsberg, we thirst for great. We never settle and always want to do better. I would like to invite you to read more about our progress and general approach and share your views on how and where we can do better in the 'open up section'.
Cheers, Jørgen