Water Stewardship

Working to use only as much water as replenishes naturally

The World Economic Forum rates water issues among the top financial risks to the global economy, and the United Nations estimates that 2 billion people live in areas of high water stress. Although clean water access is an issue for many, it is also highly variable geographically. As water stress manifests to varying degrees around the world and across the apparel supply chain, we see opportunities to take additional steps to use the science and tools at our disposal to focus reduction actions where they are most critically needed.

This includes, among other important actions, setting geographically contextual water use targets for suppliers based on local water stress, increasing the number of products made using Water<Less® techniques, scaling our water recycle and reuse program across our supply base, increasing access to clean and safe drinking water for local communities in sourcing locations, and inspiring the collective action needed to lessen the apparel industry’s impact on water issues around the world.

2025 Water Action Strategy

Our track record in water stewardship dates to the early 1990s, when we established the apparel industry’s first wastewater quality guidelines. In 2019, we published our 2025 Water Action Strategy, which leverages the best and most current publicly available data sources to address water stress in the supply chain.  The strategy is the driving force behind our geographically contextual, facility-level targets to address local water stress. It also informs updates to our Water<Less® program in which we are incorporating these contextual water targets. As with other LS&Co.-developed resources, we published our Water Action Strategy in an open-source document to inspire collective action and progress. We also held a seminar with other brands and stakeholder partners to discuss our thinking and opportunities for collaboration.

Furthermore, part of the 2025 Water Action Strategy focuses on driving resilience beyond the four walls of manufacturing facilities in areas experiencing high water stress. This is intended to bring greater resilience to our operations and the communities and watersheds touched by our business.

Measuring our Finishing Impact

Jeanologia Environmental Impact Measurement (EIM) software is a third-party digital platform developed to measure water and chemicals use in garment finishing processes for individual products. An EIM score of “green” (for water only) is an approved pathway for a product to be designated Water<Less®. We continue encouraging suppliers to use the EIM self-accreditation tool to improve the environmental performance of jeans finishing, and more LS&Co. suppliers are doing so each season. The EIM tool is also used in our two owned-and-operated factories.

Measuring our Finishing Impact

Jeanologia Environmental Impact Measurement (EIM) software is a third-party digital platform developed to measure water and chemicals use in garment finishing processes for individual products. An EIM score of “green” (for water only) is an approved pathway for a product to be designated Water<Less®. We continue encouraging suppliers to use the EIM self-accreditation tool to improve the environmental performance of jeans finishing, and more LS&Co. suppliers are doing so each season. The EIM tool is also used in our two owned-and-operated factories.

Water<Less®

Water<Less®, our flagship water stewardship program launched in 2011 to maximize water efficiency in apparel production, has become more than a series of garment finishing techniques and water recycling guidelines. Today, the Water<Less® program is the driving force for our continued innovation and improvement in water stewardship. We have shared our Water<Less® innovation manual and Recycle & Reuse Standard and Guidelines with the industry to foster broader water stewardship, and we continue to evolve the program for more positive impacts.

The Water<Less® program was originally built on technical innovations that save water compared with traditional methods in fabric development and garment finishing. We continue deploying and scaling new water-saving innovations, while also recognizing that the program highlights some of the opportunities apparel companies have to decrease manufacturing water use through a variety of changes in equipment and processes. As of the end of 2020, 67% of all LS&Co. products were made using Water<Less® finishing techniques or in facilities that meet our water recycle and reuse guidelines. And through 2020, we have saved almost 13 billion liters cumulatively since the Water<Less® program began in 2011, thanks to water-saving techniques, more efficient equipment, as well as our Reuse and Recycle standard for suppliers.

Helping Suppliers Set Contextual Water Targets

We use the widely respected World Resources Institute Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to help us gain a basin-level understanding of the local water stress contexts where we operate. We used the Water Risk Atlas to categorize our suppliers into areas of low, medium and high water stress. As we work with suppliers on water efficiency targets, the low and medium stress areas receive progressive efficiency targets, while suppliers in areas of high water stress are assigned aggressive absolute water use reduction targets compared to a 2018 baseline. Collectively, the targets are intended to contribute to our overall 50% reduction target in areas of high water stress by 2025.

How Water<Less® Innovation Intersects with Supplier Targets

One of our key 2025 Water Action Strategy intentions is to evolve our Water<Less® program into a facility-level qualification to simplify the program implementation and deepen our impact in local communities. The primary mechanism for suppliers to achieve this facility-level Water<Less® qualification is to attain their 2025 facility-level contextual water targets.

We have also set intermediate 2021 and 2023 reduction targets to serve as milestones for suppliers as they progress to their final 2025 target. These intermediate targets will indicate which suppliers are on track and can be considered Water<Less® suppliers for a two-year period. Suppliers that already used recycled and reused water for production purposes prior to 2018 (our baseline year) are allowed partial “credit” toward their 2025 contextual water targets in recognition of their proactive measures to reduce impacts. Any products manufactured by a designated Water<Less® supplier are deemed as Water<Less® garments in the marketplace.

Recycle and Reuse in Supplier Facilities

LS&Co.’s efforts to address manufacturing water use and pollution converged in 2014, when we became the first major apparel brand to author a standard for water recycling and reuse for manufacturing facilities. Our Recycle & Reuse Standard and Guidelines establish that facilities must adhere to the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) Foundation’s wastewater guidelines’ “progressive” standard and recycle more than 20% of the water used in manufacturing. Between 2014 and 2020, approximately 8.5 billion liters of water have been recycled at product and fabric manufacturing facilities that apply our water Recycle & Reuse Standard.

Recycle & Reuse Standard: Water Recycling

Recycled Water for LS&Co. Products:

2018: 742,914,113 liters
2019: 4,068,068,908 liters
2020*: 3,510,094,240 liters

*The reduction from 2019 to 2020 reflects the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on production.

Recycle & Reuse Standard: Water Recycling

Recycled Water for LS&Co. Products:

2018: 742,914,113 liters
2019: 4,068,068,908 liters
2020*: 3,510,094,240 liters

*The reduction from 2019 to 2020 reflects the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on production.

Water Use in Our Own Factories

At our owned-and-operated factories in Poland and South Africa, a variety of water-savings processes are in place. Both facilities use Water<Less® production processes and have installed water efficient retrofits on washing machines.

In addition, our facility in South Africa recently created an innovative public-private partnership with the Cape Town municipal government to construct a pipeline to return recycled water from the municipal treatment plant to Epping. The team also installed a water treatment plant that receives and treats the recycled water, enabling the facility to use 100% recycled water in manufacturing, rather than relying on the stressed local freshwater supply.

At the same time, product development and finishing teams increased their use of LS&Co.’s Water<Less® finishing techniques, which reduced water use for manufacturing by more than 25%. These actions allowed our factory to decouple its production from Cape Town’s fresh water, helping to protect local water supplies and build resilience to future water shortages.

In addition, LS&Co. grants to The Nature Conservancy’s Greater Cape Town Water Fund enabled training and work for local women who have been removing invasive shrubs, freeing up more than 120 million liters for the local water supply — part of the 4.8 billion liters of water freed up per year under the fund.

Waves for Water

In 2020, the Dockers® brand partnered with surfer Jon Rose and his foundation Waves For Water in a three-year collaboration to help provide clean drinking water to communities in need. Waves for Water provides access to clean water through portable water filtration systems, digging and renovating borehole wells, and rainwater harvesting and storage systems. Some of these projects are in or near communities where workers in the Dockers® supply chain live. The first items available in the Dockers® Waves for Water collection made their appearance in Spring 2021.

Waves for Water

In 2020, the Dockers® brand partnered with surfer Jon Rose and his foundation Waves For Water in a three-year collaboration to help provide clean drinking water to communities in need. Waves for Water provides access to clean water through portable water filtration systems, digging and renovating borehole wells, and rainwater harvesting and storage systems. Some of these projects are in or near communities where workers in the Dockers® supply chain live. The first items available in the Dockers® Waves for Water collection made their appearance in Spring 2021.

The Water-Chemicals Nexus

Water pollution also contributes to water stress, so ensuring that the water put back into the environment is clean and safe is as important as addressing water consumption. Our partnership with the ZDHC Foundation and success at meeting our own zero discharge of hazardous chemicals goal in 2020 contribute to cleaner wastewater from the apparel manufacturing process. We are working to scale the adoption of ZDHC’s Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL) and our own Screened Chemistry approach to encourage more industry peers to adopt preferred chemical lists and screening any new formulations for hazards.

Partnerships in Water Stewardship

As with our other environmental and social commitments, our progress is stronger when we collaborate with others. For this reason, LS&Co. has been a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact CEO Water Mandate since it began in 2008. The CEO Water Mandate mobilizes business leaders to address global water challenges and advance water stewardship. In 2020, we joined the Water Resilience Coalition, which will help align industry peers and NGOs to achieve our shared vision of net-positive water impact in water-stressed basins and drive toward a water-resilient value chain.

Supply Chain Transparency through IPE

The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) is the leading environmental non-governmental organization monitoring corporate environmental performance across China. LS&Co. uses the IPE Blue Map environmental database to monitor our suppliers in China, all of which are registered to the database. We have also shared our supplier factory list and data with the IPE Green Supply Chain Map, which provides real-time performance data and historical trend information related to air emissions and wastewater discharge.

LS&Co. suppliers have disclosed more than 375 Pollutant Release and Transfer Register forms since 2016, covering 100% of higher environmental impact suppliers since 2018, and we have encouraged many additional suppliers to disclose as well. The higher-impact suppliers are identified through lifecycle analysis data to determine impact levels at each stage of the supply chain, focusing on water consumption in the context of regional water stress, as well as energy use, carbon intensity, chemical use and wastewater quality.

Supply Chain Transparency through IPE

The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) is the leading environmental non-governmental organization monitoring corporate environmental performance across China. LS&Co. uses the IPE Blue Map environmental database to monitor our suppliers in China, all of which are registered to the database. We have also shared our supplier factory list and data with the IPE Green Supply Chain Map, which provides real-time performance data and historical trend information related to air emissions and wastewater discharge.

LS&Co. suppliers have disclosed more than 375 Pollutant Release and Transfer Register forms since 2016, covering 100% of higher environmental impact suppliers since 2018, and we have encouraged many additional suppliers to disclose as well. The higher-impact suppliers are identified through lifecycle analysis data to determine impact levels at each stage of the supply chain, focusing on water consumption in the context of regional water stress, as well as energy use, carbon intensity, chemical use and wastewater quality.

2020 Water Reduction Data Challenges

Our supplier-level water and climate, or energy, data for a given year comes from third-party-verified Higg data we receive in September of the following year. For water, we are using the Higg data available to us at the time of this report and plan to update our complete water data for 2020 when it is available later in 2021.

For 2020, we decided to make the third-party data verification step optional to help suppliers address costs in light of the pandemic’s financial impacts on their businesses. In 2021, we are working with suppliers to resume normal data verification processes. As of this report’s publication, many suppliers had not yet submitted their 2020 Higg data. This affects results for both our climate and water footprints. Our approach to the use of estimates in our climate data is described in the Climate Action section.

What’s Next – Water Stewardship

Starting in 2022, we will move to qualify our Water<Less® program at the facility level. This means that mills and factories that meet the facility-level contextual targets we issue — which will vary depending on the degree of water stress — will qualify as Water<Less® facilities, as will all the fabric or products coming from those facilities. Implementing such a facility-level approach both simplifies the administration of the Water<Less® program and amplifies our impact, because the Scope of facility-level targets also encompasses other brands’ production volume manufactured in the same supplier facility. The net result of meeting our 50% reduction target in areas of high water stress by 2025 will thus have positive ripple effects beyond the Scope of LS&Co.’s products.

Although we provide our suppliers the flexibility to choose their preferred approach to meet their facility-level targets, our existing Water<Less® techniques, EIM measurement software, Recycle & Reuse Standard and the PaCT partnership will remain pillars of our new water strategy and serve as key tools for facilities to meet their targets.

Our water stewardship efforts will continue to expand beyond the factory walls of our suppliers. For example, one of our key fiber innovations, cottonized hemp, is much less water-intensive than conventional cotton production and has the added benefit of relying on rainwater instead of irrigated water that could be used for other productive purposes. After all, our lifecycle analysis of a pair of 501® jeans shows that 68% of the necessary water is for cotton cultivation. Our product circularity work similarly benefits our water efforts because it reduces the amount of water required to create virgin materials.

The vision laid out in our Water Action Strategy also includes a shift toward a more basin-level perspective that considers the health of the entire watersheds where we operate. A great example is our partnership with The Nature Conservancy to restore habitat upstream from our South Africa factory to improve stream flows. We have also partnered with World Wildlife Fund, Earth Genome and Arizona State University to identify and diagnose sources of water stress in the Ravi River basin surrounding Lahore, Pakistan. Using a mapping tool, local stakeholders can use findings on water levels, supply and demand, and forecasted stress to bring the basin back into balance. The ultimate goal is to replicate this work beyond the Ravi River and inspire collective action.

Resources

2025 Water Action Strategy

Reuse & Recycle Standard and Guidelines

Dockers® Waves for Water partnership

More About Climate

Climate Overview

Climate Action

Water Stewardship

Biodiversity