Nestlé commits to making a positive water impact through the regeneration of local water cycles

Nestlé Waters, the water category from Nestle, will expand its current efforts to manage water sustainably, increase its collaboration with partners and define local solutions that will help regenerate the ecosystem in wider watershed around its sites. From 2025 onwards, those areas will help nature to retain more water than Nestlé withdraws for its Waters business.

Nestlé will now use its expertise to advance the regeneration of local water cycles through the implementation of more than 100 projects around the world by 2025. These new, measurable actions will support reforestation, wetland restoration and better water infrastructure. In order to support the execution of these projects, Nestlé will invest CHF 120 million (USD 130 million).

Climate change, higher water consumption, growing urbanization and damaged infrastructure are some of the factors contributing to the deterioration of the natural water cycle. These trends are interfering with the predictability of precipitation and the availability of clean water. Additionally, rising temperatures and more extreme weather patterns are causing more flooding and droughts.

“As a business with a long heritage of nature protection and water stewardship, we want to go beyond protecting water sources to regenerating and restoring water cycles in the areas where we operate, said Cédric Egger, Head of Sustainability at Nestlé Waters. “We know the water challenge is global, but it can only be tackled through local solutions. Now is the time to expand the scope of our actions. With Nestlé’s presence around the world, we can learn from our many partners and contribute to solving the water challenges in the locations near our operations.”

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The new initiative builds on the company’s 2017 commitment to certify all of its Waters sites by the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) by 2025.

Nestlé’s work will be tailored to individual locations, needs and issues and will take a broader approach, going beyond its own operations. Nestlé will work with local water users, communities, partners and global experts to identify, develop and progress projects specific to those challenges. As a founding member of the 2030 Water Resources Group (2030 WRG), Nestlé has a history of collaborating with leaders and 10 experts from the public, private and civil society sectors to design solutions for sustainable water management. The company will apply its experience and learnings from the 2030 WRG as well as from its many other partnerships in the implementation of its more than 100 water conservation projects. Among those to be completed by 2025 are:

• Vittel – Wetland reforestation and creation in Vosges, France
• Buxton – Land conservation (protecting land from development) and natural flood management interventions in Derbyshire UK
• Nestlé Pure Life – Support for farmers to use drip irrigation in Sheikhupura, Pakistan
• Nestlé Pure Life – Restoration and building infrastructure around canal systems and the delivery of water treatment, filtration and pipeline infrastructure, together with local stakeholders, for the municipal water supply for local communities in Benha, Egypt

All projects will be measurable, using the World Resource 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 challenges.

Using this methodology, a newly created external panel reviews the relevance and sustainability of the projects versus the local challenges and opportunities. We will report on our progress on a regular basis. Nestlé Waters will ensure a constant and transparent communication on the evolution of each area in which it operates, both from the perspective of exploitation activities and projects implemented to regenerate local water cycles.