Strengthening water resilience where it matters most

Water replenishment is about restoring water to the environment and communities in and around the places where we operate and source our agricultural raw materials.

There is no single solution. Our projects are designed around local needs and basin risks, from improving access to clean water and sanitation to restoring forests and watersheds, capturing rainwater, and helping water infiltrate back into the ground.

Since 2016, we’ve replenished more than 8.1 million cubic metres of water – equivalent to more than 8.1 billion litres. And across our water replenishment programmes since 2020 we have:

• Completed 212 community water projects across 12 countries and five continents.
• Helped to bring access to clean water to over 700,000 people, often in remote rural communities.
• Supported the landscapes on which healthy water systems depend by planting more than 2.2 million trees, restoring wetlands, harvesting rainwater and desilting ponds.

Behind these numbers are people, communities and basins, facing their own distinct water challenges, which is why our approach starts locally. Across our programmes globally, around 60% of projects have focused on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), 18% on reforestation and 10% on infiltration, alongside other many tailored interventions.

“Reaching this milestone is something we can all be proud of. It reflects years of collective action between our colleagues, communities and partners around the world, turning our water stewardship ambitions into meaningful action.

Together, we've helped create lasting benefits for the communities where we operate, while driving improvements in our own operations and protecting one of our most precious shared resources. This is an important achievement and an integral part of our holistic water stewardship strategy which brings together water, nature and people to build business and community resilience in key water-stressed basins.”

Ewan Andrew
President Global Supply Chain and Procurement and Chief Sustainability Officer

It is this combination of global ambition and locally designed action that has helped us reach our replenishment goal and drive the local impact. You can view an interactive map of our water projects here.

Water is central to our Climate Transition Plan and our approach to both climate mitigation and adaptation. As climate change intensifies water-related risks, reliable water supplies are increasingly important to the resilience of our operations, supply chains, communities and ecosystems.

Our approach combines water stewardship with action on climate, agriculture and nature. We invest in collective action and regenerative agriculture to manage impacts and dependencies through an integrated approach to strengthen community, landscape and business climate resilience.

Water challenges cannot be solved by one organisation alone.

Achieving our replenishment goal has depended on partnerships with communities, governments, NGOs, technical experts and other companies. We are building on this approach through our goal to take collective action across our 20 priority water basins, bringing stakeholders together to address shared water risks and complementing our work on water efficiency, replenishment and water quality.

Above all, water stewardship and its integration with nature and agriculture needs to be a part of how businesses plan for the future.

For us, water security supports the farmers who grow our ingredients, the communities around our sites and in our supply chains, and our ability to make our brands. Protecting it strengthens our licence to operate and helps build resilience and enable growth for the long term.

Replenishing more water than we use in water-stressed areas demonstrates what sustained action can achieve. Our focus now is on building on that progress - continuing to improve water efficiency and quality, maintaining replenishment at our own sites, and extending replenishment and collective action into priority basins where our key suppliers are located, encouraging an integrated approach and ultimately helping to strengthen the water systems on which our communities, business and the natural environment depend.