P&G Expands Water Sustainability Goals

P&G is Adding Four New 2020 Goals, Aimed at Expanding Its Efforts in Water Conservation and Improving the Environmental Sustainability of Its Packaging

Procter & Gamble is updating its sustainability commitments, expanding some of its efforts and dialing back on another.Behind that announcement is a larger story about how the world's largest consumer packaged goods story is viewing sustainability these days.

Setting sustainability goals for a multinational company can be tricky stuff. How high can you set the bar and still set yourself up for success? And what if you reach your goal ahead of schedule — do you raise the bar? What if you're not making the progress you hoped — do you lower the bar? Four years ago, P&Gset a series of 10-year goals. As it nears the halfway point, it's a good time to reassess.

"The vast majority of those goals that we established at the time looked like they were in the right order of magnitude and we should be able to deliver on them by 2020. ... (However,) it became apparent that while we're on track for most of these goals, there are some areas which we should be acting on — or should at least be talking about — that were simply absent from the goals."

Moreover, "The goals weren't sufficiently hardwired with the business units in the company," a state of affairs with which many corporate sustainability executives can identify.

Liquid assets

The water goals being announced today reflect the understanding among many companies about the declining or unreliability of that precious resource in many parts of the world. While Riant said P&G isn't a major water user in most areas where it operates, it's still a growing concern. The lion's share of P&G's water impacts come during the consumer-use phase — think shampoo, toothpaste and laundry detergent.

As a result, the company is focused on the smaller share: water used in its own facilities. Specifically, P&G is committing to reduce water used in its manufacturing by 20 percent per unit of production, with a specific focus on conservation efforts at facilities in water-stressed regions, and to provide 1 billion people access to "water-efficient products," although that is not defined.

As part of its focus on water, the company is being "much more rigorous about doing assessments of our facilities," said Riant. "Before any new facility is located or decided upon, we want to make sure we understand its supportability from a water availability point of view. We are also going through each of our existing facilities and understanding the current water availability environment where they are located. Are they in stressed areas? Do we need to give them a priority in the interventions that we can make from a technology point of view? I think we're getting much more systemic about our operations in that regard because it's necessary given the problems in some areas now."

I asked Riant how much of the company's water-efficiency goals will come from new technology and how much from operational changes."It's frankly quite hard to separate the two," he responded. "A lot of the what you might call operational impacts are very dependent on us finding new, efficient processes. There will also be operating efficiencies — being careful that we recycle water by allowing it to evaporate out of the system and that kind of thing — but a lot of it is coming up with novel, more efficient technologies for using water."

Foiled by oil

The other part of P&G's announcement has to do with its commitment, set out four years ago, to replace 25 percent of its petroleum-derived raw materials with renewable materials by 2020. Today, the company is revising that commitment downward. Rather, stated the company, it is committing "to creating technologies by 2020 that would let P&G substitute its top petroleum-derived raw materials with renewable materials, as cost and scale permit."

To be sure, there's an barrelful of squishiness in that statement.

As part of its assessment, P&G is adding four new 2020 goals, aimed at expanding its efforts in water conservation and improving the environmental sustainability of its packaging. It is also revising an existing goal to drive more innovation on renewable materials.

The reassessment coincides with the emergence of Martin Riant, group president, Global Baby and Feminine & Family Care, who late last year became P&G's executive sponsor of sustainability, a position for which he volunteered. Riant, who has been with the company since 1980, took a fresh look at the 2010 goals.Riant leads Procter and Gamble's $21 billion baby, feminine and family care business. The sector features a portfolio of powerful billion-dollar brands such as Pampers — P&G's largest — and Bounty, Charmin and Always, along with other iconic brands including Tampax, Naturella, Puffs and Luvs.

Source: GreenBiz

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• Sustainability
• Water Management