Summary
- Danone has cut methane emissions from fresh milk by 29.8% vs. 2020, putting the company within a fraction of its 30% 2030 target five years early.
- The biggest 2025 gains came from procurement shifts (17.6%) and farm‑level improvements (11.2%), including herd and manure‑management upgrades.
- Nearly 42% of key ingredients now come from regenerative‑transition farms, indicating a rapid pivot toward lower‑emissions sourcing.
In early 2026, Danone remains the only industry major with emissions reduction targets tied specifically to methane from milk and dairy products.
The company views methane mitigation as “the most immediate opportunity to slow down global warming” and has committed to reducing absolute methane emissions by 30% by 2030.
At the end of 2025, the group’s methane reductions sit at 29.8% compared to its 2020 baseline – meaning the company has nearly hit its 2030 target five years ahead of time.
So how has the dairy major achieved this?
Between 2020 and 2024, the maker of Activia and Oikos cut methane by 25% - a decrease of over 1 MtCO2e of its milk emissions. The reductions were achieved most notably in the AMEA region; as a result of the company’s action plans on milk, and through the divestment of Horizon Organic, the largest USDA-certified organic dairy brand. Favorable weather conditions also help boost productivity and reduce emissions per kilogram of milk.
In 2025, the reductions were achieved through:
- procurement decisions: 17.6%
- farm performance management: 11.2% including herd management (5.9%) and manure management (3.6%), farm portfolio mix (1.2%) and feed additives (0.5%), and
- other factors such as change in scope and methodology: 1%.
We look at each one in detail below.
Procurement strategy
Danone’s main methane reduction lever in 2025 was linked to procurement choices – particularly, milk volumes. This suggests Danone is changing how much milk it sources – and from whom – in order to improve its sustainability performance.
While the dairy major is not explicit about what the volume decisions are linked to, there are several clues that the company is increasingly leaning towards low-emissions and regenerative ag sources as an example.
In 2025, nearly half (42%) of key ingredients were sourced from farms transitioning to regenerative agriculture, including dairy farms. The data shows Danone is accelerating its efforts in that respect – having increased its regenerative sourcing by 14% in just three years, and 3% over the past year alone.
The company is also embedding methane requirements in its contracts, with suppliers now expected to work towards meeting methane-related performance targets. The same goes for its long-term contracted dairy farmers in the US and Europe (which supply 30% of milk bought by the company) – they too are tied to adopting regenerative ag practices, carrying out manure and herd management improvements, and monitoring farm performance, with Danone incentivising these efforts and providing long-term price stability as well.
This approach has resulted in half of Danone’s dairy ingredient volumes to be covered by contractual GHG reduction targets, and 75% of its suppliers by volume to have now committed to science-based targets.
More broadly, methane and climate impacts are incorporated into sourcing decisions across categories, with procurement teams being professionally trained to integrate methane and sustainability metrics in buying decisions.
Farm-level management
Danone attributes 11.2% of its methane emissions reductions to farm performance. Within that, the biggest improvement (5.9%) came from herd management strategies – including better herd productivity and reproductive efficiency and herd structure – which led to reduced methane per litre of milk.
Manure management improvements delivered 3.6% of reductions, driven by improved manure handling systems, better storage practices, reduced anaerobic manure decomposition, and other methods. Portfolio mix improvements – such as shifting to lower‑methane‑intensity farms or regions – delivered 1.2% reduction.
Farm monitoring is a crucial part of how the company tracks and reports emissions at source. Over 90% of Danone’s direct milk-collection volumes are monitored through a science-based monitoring tool – be it the Cool Farm Tool (used in 18 countries for farm‑level GHG and methane accounting) or the CAP’2ER (adopted in France).
Scope and methodology changes
In 2025, Danone re-categorised some of its emissions between scopes as it adopted new calculation frameworks and changed its supplier-level and fresh milk emissions methodologies.
For example, the company revised its methane emissions scope to align it with SBTi FLAG guidance. As a result, milk production at Danone‑owned farms (previously counted as Scope 3 purchased‑milk emissions) moved to Scope 1 (FLAG); and storage emissions in retailers’ warehouses also moved from ‘use of sold products’ to downstream transport and distribution. The 2020 methane baseline has also been recalculated per GHG Protocol and SBTi requirements.
Overall, Danone is closing in on its methane milestone, proving that effective mitigation is possible without impacting profitability.
