Today, in recognition of World Water Day, Levi Strauss & Co. is joining fellow industry leaders and the U.N. Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate in a new partnership known as the Water Resilience Coalition, which supports our strategic vision on water and our commitment to collaborate with others to drive outsized impacts.
Together, the coalition is committing to create water-resilient value chains and achieve net-positive impacts in water-stressed basins by 2050. What’s more, it aims to demonstrate that it has progressed halfway to these targets no later than 2030.
We have a long track record of leadership on water, dating back to establishing the apparel industry’s first wastewater quality guidelines in the early 1990s. Over the past decade, we’ve implemented and scaled programs like Water<Less® across our products and open-sourced them to our industry so that our peers can adopt them and drive additional positive impacts.
Last year, we published our 2025 Water Action Strategy, which leverages decades of leading water action and the latest data sources to target our programs to address water stress in the supply chain. Specifically, we aim to half the amount of water we use for manufacturing in areas of high-water stress against a 2018 baseline and help all of our key apparel and fabric suppliers, representing over 80 percent of production, to hit their contextual Water<Less® targets by 2025. This all supports our ultimate vision, to use only as much water as replenishes naturally, wherever we operate.
Following our strategy release and open-sourcing it last August, we hosted a two-day forum for apparel industry peers and key stakeholders to share our strategic developments and discuss opportunities to collaborate to drive water stewardship and resilience.
The Water Resilience Coalition’s approach and vision amplify those of our Water Action Strategy and will help us drive resilience across our value chain and into the watersheds and communities that we all touch.
While the coalition’s launch comes during uncertain and challenging times, we recognize that access to safe and reliable freshwater is more important than ever during this public health crisis. No matter the circumstance, we maintain our commitment to profits through principles and to promoting the sustainability, security, and resiliency of freshwater resources. We know that we’ll be able to have an outsized impact and progress farther and faster in partnership with fellow coalition members and supporting organizations.
