đ± What To Do About Water: Offsetting, Greenwashing, and Lessons from Burt's Bees.
Featuring Burt's Bees, Pangaia, Black Bee Honey, Pandora and more...
Happy Friday!
This week weâre looking at water, and how brands can measure, reduce and manage the impact they have on water resources. We cover:
Water Offsetting: What it is and how your business can avoid âgreenwashingâ.
How Burtâs Bees failed to meet their water targets, and why brands should be inspired by their approach since.
In case you missed it:Â How Sipsmith's 5-part plan includes a 46% emissions reduction target, featuring Ellie Stirk, Sustainability Lead.
> Good News This Week
đŻ Black Bee Honey has worked with ClimatePartner to achieve carbon neutrality across all products.Â
đŻ Pandora announced its switch to less carbon intensive packaging, saving the CO2 equivalent of 800 cars per year.Â
âïž Marks & Spencer has pledged to cut its carbon footprint by a third by 2025, from a 5.7million tonne baseline in 2017, as part of its commitment to be fully net zero by 2040. Itâs a reset of their original Plan A. Theyâve also relaunched their Look Behind The Label platform and campaign.Â
âïž musicMagpie announced its partnership with Asda, aiming to prevent thousands of tonnes of consumer technology and media products ending up as waste. The partnership will involve musicMagpieâs SMARTDrop kiosks across Asda stores.Â
âïž Tommy Hilfiger announced itâs adding product-level environmental impact information to its online stores, utilising the Higg Index (a partnership between Higg and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition).
âĄïž Spain is drafting a decree to ban the sale of fruit and vegetables in plastic wrapping, coming into effect in 2023. It will apply to produce weighing under 1.5 kilograms, following similar legislation in France, where it will go into effect next year.
âĄïž Packaging Europeâs Sustainability Awards 2021 were announced yesterday. The overall winner was Nextekâs NEXTLOOPP, a ground-breaking project that aims to create a circular economy for food-grade polypropylene. Winners in other categories include CMC, HelloFresh, watttron, Searious Business, Mibelle, Huhtamaki and McDonaldâs, and NestlĂ©.Â
> Click on each link to read more.
> Quick Take
Water Offsetting: How your business can avoid âgreenwashingâ.
Weâve all heard of carbon offsetting. In the simplest terms, this can be understood as a reduction in GHG emissions (or increase in carbon storage) used to compensate for emissions that occur elsewhere. Through practices such as buying green renewable energy certificates and rainforest replanting projects, companies such as Google and Sky can legally claim âcarbon neutralityâ. Water offsetting uses exactly the same principle. By investing in water-basin restoration schemes, companies can, in theory, compensate for the water they use throughout their supply chain. Given the controversy surrounding carbon offsetting and its alleged use for âgreenwashingâ, is water offsetting a worthwhile investment for brands? Letâs take a closer look.
First, a fundamental question: is water offsetting effective? The answer, as youâd expect, seems to be âit can beâ. Carbon and water offsetting are often treated like-for-like. Yet, theyâre not entirely comparable. When it comes to CO2e emissions, the atmosphere is effectively a single entity. The effect on the climate is the same wherever emissions occur, and many argue that it doesnât make much difference where carbon is emitted and saved. This isnât the case for water. When you use water, youâre extracting water from a specific water basin or system. It affects that areaâs resources, affecting that areaâs ecology and often negatively impacting that areaâs local communities. Using water from an already heavily depleted river catchment area, for instance, has a much greater environmental impact than if itâs extracted from a water-rich area. Water offsetting is therefore only truly effective if it relates to the same catchment area. This means that, if a brand wants to offset their depletion of natural water reserves from their manufacturing site in India, itâs not as simple as investing in a project in Nigeria.
Even more pertinently, businesses need not to rely on offsetting as a means to achieve water neutrality. It should never be considered an easy fix. As stated in this 2020 Waterwise report, the focus on offsetting could be actively unhelpful if it reduces efforts to reduce waste across operations and across the supply chain (learn more here).Â
These two conditions are fundamental to the definition of water neutrality. Where this is adopted by the UK Government, it can be argued that some businesses have overlooked such nuances in their desire to achieve âwater neutralâ status. Coca Cola provides a cautionary tale. Their heavily marketed claims of water neutrality fail to account for the location of water consumption and overlook whole-chain waste. Theyâve come under fire as a result, proving that customers are far more savvy than often given credit for.
Yet, none of this means that water offsetting projects are a write-off for brands. Many projects themselves admirably aim to do good. Provided you identify a partner whose projects are sensitive to local environmental and economic conditions, (see our resources below) offsetting can be a great way for your brand to actively contribute towards the Sustainable Development Goals. In fact, brands who integrate offsetting within their wider sustainability framework often will well-deserved kudos with customers. After all, itâs not the offsetting itself that can leave your brand open to accusations of âgreenwashingâ. Itâs the claim that youâre âwater neutralâ as a result. Pangaia, for instance, track their water use through Life-Cycle Assessments and openly use offset schemes. Yet, theyâve combined this with efforts to minimise water at every stage, with product descriptions proudly declaring when â95% of water used is rainfed, protecting groundwaterâ. Last year, they boasted $75 million in revenue and frequently win positive PR from the likes of Forbes.Â
So, is water offsetting a viable - and marketable - option for brands? It depends. Given the complicated nature of business supply chains, itâs unlikely youâll find a water offset scheme relating directly to the location of your water consumption. Therefore, youâll need to integrate offsets with water management schemes. Target wasteful areas of operations. Measure your water usage. Act by implementing water-saving strategies. Finally youâll need to be transparent about what your âoffsetsâ really mean.Â
How to Target, Measure and Act - resources to help you measure and mitigate your water footprint:
Waterfootprint.org provides a free water footprint assessment tool for companies, and a guide for responsible water stewardship schemes. Theyâre a great place for companies to take their first steps in whole-chain water management.
The Courtauld Commitmentâs Water Ambition is a âcollaborative programme that works on a localised level, dealing directly at source with issues specific within each catchment areaâ. Bonus: Integrate this resource with food waste management through the Courtauld Commitment. Read our take here.
Our MEASURE database provides a list of partners to help you track water consumption and implement waste-saving strategies. For example, Circular Ecology and Anthesis provide guidance on water management and footprinting.
Inspired? 3 water offsetting schemes:
The Bonneville Environmental Foundation in America's Pacific Northwest offers businesses the opportunity to preserve depleted rivers and streams. See this weekâs profile on Burtâs Bees below for a case study.
Green Earth Africa matches companies with the purchase of power-efficient water pumps and drip irrigation projects in Africa. They provide a nuanced and transparent look at the complications of water offsets and âneutralityâ.
Gold Standard provides âWater Benefit Certificatesâ to tie together water preservation with human-oriented Sustainable Development Goals.
Have further thoughts to add? We always appreciate feedback and opinions. Either comment them below or send us an email at info@followingthefootprints.com.
Havenât subscribed to Following the Footprints yet?
> Brand Spotlight
Burtâs Bees failed to meet their water targets. Here's what businesses can learn from them.
Burtâs Bees failed. This is what theyâve admitted of their water management strategy in their 2020 Sustainability Report. So why is this not a disaster for their brand image? Itâs simple: theyâve done what weâre all taught to do as children. Theyâve owned up to it, tried to make up for it, learned from it. By doing so, theyâve provided a lesson in corporate transparency and illustrated that failure can be used for good in the pursuit of sustainability.
Burtâs Bees have a pristine reputation as a âgreenâ brand. In 2021 they made headlines with their commitment to Net Zero Plastic to Nature by 2025. Aligning themselves with the Ellen Macarthur Foundationâs goals, theyâve got big visions of a circular economy. Walking the talk, theyâve partnered with waste-minimising pioneers Loop to release a waste-free cleanser. Boasting landfill-free operations since 2010 and certified Carbon-Neutrality, Burtâs bees are undeniably impressive in their sustainability credentials.
With their iconic bumble-bee branding, itâs no wonder that the preservation of nature is a priority for Burtâs Bees. To a large extent, their efforts in this domain appear equally polished. Alongside existing rewilding projects with partners Fresh Energy, the brand has joined forces with the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation in a âMoonshot goal to preserve half the earthâ. Yet, there is one area theyâve failed to meet their targets: water waste. With an already conservative goal to âReduce water usage by 10% since 2011â, last year they used 30% more water per mass unit of production than their 2011 baseline.Â
This in itself is far from impressive. Burts Beesâ response, however, is a good lesson for other brands. Not only have they measured their water impact in the first place, theyâve explained how things went wrong, why and what theyâre doing about it. This includes, for one, purchasing of water restoration certificates to offset their usage. If youâve read this weekâs Quick Take, youâll know such âoffsetsâ can be problematic. Burtâs Bees, however, have used this power wisely. Theyâve selected responsible projects from Bonneville Environmental Foundation. Theyâve used it as a last resort. Itâs not a replacement for their water-saving strategies. And, crucially, theyâve been transparent about just what their offsetting means.
A pristine brand reputation doesnât require perfection. It does, however, require honesty.
Support Burtâs Bees via their shop:
> In case you missed it
đ„ #8 - Meet the Brands: How Sipsmith's 5-part plan includes a 46% emissions reduction target.
Featuring Ellie Stirk, Sustainability Lead at Sipsmith.
