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Sustainable water management in our operations
Water is fundamental to our operations and is a vital resource for everyone. Water preservation is at the heart of our efforts to build a more efficient business.
We have implemented programs to continuously improve water efficiency at our factories and we have consistently reduced water withdrawals, even as production volumes increase.
Our approach to water stewardship must be local or context based. We use various sets of publicly available data from four independent sources to evaluate the water stress at our factory locations. Each Nestlé site receives a score, allowing us to make a list of Where It Matters locations to prioritize actions.
Our context-based approach involves a three-step roadmap from local to wider catchment level: regulatory compliance as a minimum, followed by ‘excellence’ in water resources management, and then collective action across landscapes.
We perform regular assessments of local water resources and water use inside and outside our factories, including for possible future risks. We engage with stakeholders and monitor external research findings.
Our progress toward improving water efficiency in our operations
97.1
million m3
100
%
2.38
million m3
How we manage water stewardship in our operations
We constantly seek to improve water efficiency at our factories, monitoring water withdrawals and water quality at every one. We promote recycling and reusing water where possible and closely monitor the quality of the water we discharge. This due diligence approach guarantees regulatory compliance and provides a level of assurance that downstream ecosystems are protected.
Our digital compliance assessment and monitoring tool provide further assurance that our factories meet the exacting standards of our Nestlé Environmental Requirements (NER) for water quality.
Safeguarding water with real-time insights
We always aim to use water in the most efficient ways possible. This is why, in 2019, we began installing Aquassay technology in our factories to monitor water from the source through to discharge. The technology helps factory managers highlight areas for improvement in real-time.
Collaborating with the Alliance for Water Stewardship for high water efficiency standards
The Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Standard is the first global standard for measuring responsible water stewardship across social, environmental and economic criteria.
AWS provides a globally applicable framework that allows major water users to understand their water use and impacts, and to work collaboratively and transparently toward sustainable water management.
The AWS Standard helps sites adopt best practices to address the shared water challenges of a watershed. It also helps ensure responsible water stewardship actions for all stakeholders.
AWS Certification
The AWS certification process enables broader, improved collaboration among local stakeholders. It promotes responsible water use that benefits local communities socially and economically while supporting the environmental sustainability of watersheds.
It also leads to a stronger understanding of local water challenges and more meaningful collective actions to address them – all vital to sustainable water resource management.
We aim to certify all our Nestlé Waters sites to the AWS Standard by 2025.
