Reduce water use intensity by 15% across our manufacturing facilities by 2025 (per metric ton of product made).
-8.1%
Reduce water use intensity by 20% in high-risk
watershed areas by 2025 (per metric ton of product made).
-19.5%
Water Use & Conservation
Water is fundamental to all life and business either directly or indirectly. Making high-quality products requires that we begin with high-quality ingredients, of which fresh-quality water is a key input. As a food and beverage company, having access to sufficient amounts of high-quality freshwater, both now and in the future, is critical to our business. Water is used in many areas of our value chain. It is a vital input for growing various agricultural ingredients we use in our products. We also use water as a direct ingredient and for our manufacturing, cleaning, and sanitation processes. Access to high-quality water is pivotal for us to achieve our high standards of food safety and quality. High-quality water will continue to be a vital component throughout our value chain.
Kraft Heinz has been a signatory of the CEO Water Mandate since 2020. We are focused on water stewardship in each aspect of our business. Within our operational boundary, we have set a goal to reduce our water use intensity by 20 percent across manufacturing facilities in high-risk watershed areas and 15 percent across all manufacturing facilities by 2025 with a 2019 baseline. Our water reduction strategy consists of a variety of aspects, including partnerships with water efficiency experts, water recycling programs, and best practice sharing among our global facilities.
Water reduction is part of the KHMS, which we use to implement water-saving measures across our facilities. For less mature facilities, the KHMS first focuses on water-saving essentials, which include practices like leak detection routines. For mature facilities, we expect sites to have a fully automated water management system in place. During our annual Champions Week and through campaigns like Don’t Be a Drip, employees are able to share best practices from their factories and learn from others about water-saving improvements.
Across our supply chain, we manage water risk as part of our supplier sustainability program. In general, all Kraft Heinz suppliers are asked to abide by our Supplier Guiding Principles, which include stipulations on responsible water stewardship. For key commodities, we have more in-depth mechanisms to oversee water stewardship such as our Sustainable Agricultural Practices Manual, sustainably-sourced tomatoes goal, and grower audits.
2023 Progress
In 2023, we improved water use intensity by 8.1 percent across our manufacturing facilities and by 19.5 percent across our manufacturing facilities in high-risk watershed areas compared to our 2019 baseline. We are proud that in 2023 we nearly achieved our goal to reduce water use intensity by 20 percent in high-risk watershed areas. This significant progress on our goal was due to furthering our water recycling and efficiency programs as well as our embedded plans to drive improvements in high-risk areas.
Looking Ahead
At Kraft Heinz, we are always striving to further understand risks and manage water stewardship across our value chain. We are currently working on a global water policy and will share details in future reporting.
* Please note that environmental data for years between the base year (2019) and reporting year are not recalculated for acquisitions and divestitures as per our Basis of Reporting for ESG indicators.
Don’t Be a Drip: Employees Take Action to Save Water in Cairo, Egypt
While Kraft Heinz leverages technology and other solutions to drive improvements toward our water reduction targets, we also continue to modify our ways of working to strengthen our water-saving culture. An example of how we’re achieving this progress is through employee-led water-saving campaigns. These global campaigns empower our employees to identify improvements we can take to save water and reduce water consumption across our operations.
In 2023, five of our factories led “Don’t Be a Drip” campaigns, including our Cairo, Egypt facility, which is in an area that is defined as water-risk. During the challenge, employees tracked facilities’ daily water consumption, conducted water-saving walks, as well as implemented and planned future water-saving actions. In Cairo alone, employees implemented, planned, and investigated more than twenty water reduction actions during the challenge—from fixing pipe connections to improving cooler efficiency—actions that were estimated to save up to 48 cubic meters of water per month.
Water Risk Assessment
We conduct a water risk assessment of our global manufacturing operations every two to five years with interim assessments as needed. These assessments leverage tools like the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Aqueduct along with the subject matter expertise of external consulting partners. We then evaluate our watershed conditions to validate economic scarcity factors not fully addressed by the database indicators.
For each of our evaluated facilities, we identify physical, legislative and reputational risks. Our water risk assessment was updated in 2023. In this update, we identified four new Kraft Heinz sites (noted below on the map in gold) that have some degrees of elevated water stress and removed three sites. We will bring these four new sites under our already-established routes and routines for high-risk areas. As of December 2023, of the 67 manufacturing facilities we operate, 19 facilities had some degrees of elevated water stress. In addition to water reduction targets, we also developed a plan that focuses on high-risk areas to drive improvements and mitigate risks and to provide updates on our ongoing risk evaluation. We evaluate any interim mitigation strategies as needed.
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