Water Stewardship

Driving better water use

Water is used at most stages of making clothes, from growing cotton to dyeing fabrics, so it’s important that it’s used efficiently.

We’ve signed up to WRAP’s Textiles 2030 initiative, which gives us a target to reduce the water footprint of new products we sell by 30%.

Our 2030 Water Stewardship Strategy guides all the work we’re doing to manage our water impacts, risks and opportunities. We’re doing this through three different ways:

On site

We’re helping suppliers find ways to reduce water usage, reuse and recycle water, and improve water quality management, particularly at sites in vulnerable, water-stressed regions.

We also help fund the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), a programme supporting many of our suppliers in addressing the water risks they face in their operations.

At the river basin

Many of our suppliers share water risks because they rely on the same sources. We’re working with them, other brands and governing bodies to find collaborative solutions for those challenges.

In our product footprint

Different production methods and materials have different water impacts. We’re reducing our water impact in our supply chain through alternative materials and fibres use. Read more about our efforts here.

Keeping water healthy

Microfibres are another challenge in the fashion industry. These tiny threads, often plastic, can be shed by some synthetic materials. We’re exploring the best ways to detect if there are microfibres in wastewater, and working with suppliers to refine their processes and technologies to better target their removal. This work is all part of our partnerships with the Microfibre Consortium and Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) Foundation.

We’re partnering with the Oxford Molecular Biosensors (OMB) to understand water quality impacts to freshwater biodiversity within a given catchment. The aim is for the work to help us and the industry drive greater wastewater performance.