They got into a boat for the future: Diageo’s attitude-shaping program from volunteering on Lake Tisza to cross-border actions

By: Trademagazin Date: 2025. 06. 11. 11:45

Diageo did not stay on the shore this year either: in 2025, it again participated in the Tisza Lake river clean-up campaign, and its employees, encouraged by kayaker Tamara Csipes, got into boats to collect the garbage that endangers the living space of future generations. All this is part of the company’s waste elimination action program called CALL-Action, which encourages active environmental protection. The message is clear: social responsibility is not a billboard, but hard work – on water, in floodplains, across borders.

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One of the world’s leading alcoholic beverage manufacturers and distributors, Diageo and its partners have put real social intervention on the table in recent years: they launched eco-buses in Transcarpathia, developed waste yards, and saved the Tisza River from 2,000 tons of plastic in three years. The latest stop: Lake Tisza, where the company’s employees collected waste on the water with their own hands. Not because they had to. But because that’s what it means to be truly responsible.

Results measured in tons

During the 2025 Tisza River Cleanup, Diageo’s 100-person team collected a total of 113 bags of waste from the lake in two days. The bags weighed an average of 5.5–6 kilograms, so the amount collected was well over 600 kilograms. The company’s volunteers actively participated in protecting Hungarian waters, thus making their team building activity socially useful. Tamara Csipes, a two-time Olympic, nine-time world and ten-time European kayaker, also joined the event to encourage employees and emphasize the importance of protecting our waters with her personal presence: “It’s not necessarily everyone’s comfort zone to pick up trash, but sometimes you have to step out of this little bubble we live in.”

“We are proud that our employees have been involved in volunteer work for years, because for us, sustainability really makes sense in action. We believe in real change – although support is important, it is even more important if we take action ourselves. Putting on rubber boots and gloves and getting into the water, we get a truly shocking picture of how serious a problem river pollution is. When sorting through the bags, in addition to plastic bottles, there was also a lot of hazardous waste, clothing and many everyday objects that not only pollute the environment, but also remind us of our own responsibility. These are images that we will not forget; they leave a deep impression on us and encourage us to take action.”

– added Gergely Ábrahám, Diageo’s Eastern European Corporate Relations Director, who emphasized that the protection of natural waters in the region cannot be solved within borders – common thinking, infrastructure and real cooperation are needed. Sustainability and the protection of natural waters are a key element of Diageo’s social responsibility. The Tisza Lake litter pick-up is closely linked to the CALL-Action project launched in February 2022, which was implemented by a collaboration of Transcarpathian organizations, coordinated by the PET Cup and financially supported by Diageo Zrt.