Helping to create a positive water impact through our Nestlé Waters Pledge

Our waters business will advance the regeneration of the water cycle to help create a positive water impact everywhere it operates by 2025.

Nestlé's bottled-water business is a guardian of unique water resources, helping to protect natural aquifers near our operations and working in close partnership with others to make safe, clean water available to all. We will expand our current efforts to manage water sustainably beyond our own waters operations and increase our collaboration with partners to identify and support local solutions.

Our key actions toward creating a positive water impact

Water stewardship

Water stewardship is the responsible planning and management of water resources. Nestlé Waters wants to play an active role in helping to conserve water resources everywhere we operate. To do so, we will work with many partners to develop tailored projects that help find local solutions. We use a robust approach built on five steps - saving water, protecting the quality of natural water sources and catchment, sharing our knowledge, contributing to communities and certifying our all sites to the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) standard by 2025.

Helping regenerate water cycles

By 2025, we will use our expertise to help advance the regeneration of local water cycles by implementing more than 100 projects around our 48 global waters sites, supported by a CHF 120 million investment. From 2025 onwards, our aim is for these projects to help nature retain more water than our bottled-water business uses.

These projects will support: 

• Reforestation efforts to help prevent runoff
• Wetland restoration and rainwater harvesting to increase recharge 
• Drip irrigation to reduce water withdrawals.

Our work will be tailored to individual locations' needs and issues and will extend beyond our own operations. Nestlé will work with local water users, communities, partners and global experts to identify, develop and progress projects specific to those challenges.

All our projects will be measurable, using the World Resources Institute's Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA) methodology. This methodology provides consistency in analyzing water management activities and helps to ensure that such activities address current and future shared water needs and issues.

Collaborating to solve the challenge

Water is a shared resource, so caring for it must be through joint collaborative actions. Through partnerships in the locations where we operate, we can make a difference to inspire regenerative water approaches.

To review the relevance and sustainability of our Nestlé Waters’ projects, we have established an external panel of non-governmental organizations and academia, including representatives from The Nature Conservancy, Global World Challenge and the CEO Water Mandate, among others. We will continue to provide this panel with full transparency on our water usage at each of our sites and on what our projects aim to contribute. 

2030 Water Resources Group

As a founding member of the 2030 Water Resources Group (2030 WRG), Nestlé is building strong partnerships in pursuit of more sustainable water management. In Tanzania, the 2030 WRG is working with farmers to develop more efficient practices, improve water technologies such as drip irrigation, and build financial stability.

WASH4work initiative

Nestlé is also a member of the WASH4work initiative, which asks businesses to take action to address WASH challenges in the workplace, in communities where the business operates and in supply chains.

CEO Water Mandate

We are a member of the CEO Water Mandate, a UN Global Compact initiative that unites business leaders on water, sanitation and Sustainable Development Goals.