Water has become a powerful connective force for Target Corporation. Earlier this year the retailer announced a freshwater stewardship approach created in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) that built on the company’s existing water management aspirations.
Then, this summer, the company’s 2018 corporate responsibility report described how water management factors into the retailer’s new overarching CR strategy called Future at Heart. Clean, drinkable water is a human right and should be accessible for all, the report said.
“The way the freshwater stewardship strategy came to life is a great example of thinking through what we need on an enterprise level,” says Jennifer Silberman, vice president of corporate responsibility at Target. “We were looking across the total value chain for Target, everything from the raw materials all the way to the customer use of water.”
Recently we caught up with Silberman to learn more about the retailer’s approach to water management, including setting ambitious goals and forming meaningful partnerships with nonprofits.
What prompted Target to focus on water?
Water touches so many priority areas of the business. We can’t have a responsible resource use in raw materials strategy if we’re not addressing water. We have to look at water reduction and conservation if we’re going to be operating sustainable buildings throughout our direct operations. Around the world, especially in our manufacturing communities, access to clean water is foundational for having an improved quality of life.
With the broader newly developed focus of our corporate responsibility strategy, water was the first out of the gate.
How did you develop the new holistic freshwater stewardship strategy?
We’d been working with the World Wildlife Fund for the past year, and started doing an assessment to understand the areas within our business operations and supply chain where we had the greatest impact or needed the greatest amount of water. Every team that touches a freshwater resource was part of the co-creation of the approach.
We built the strategy focused on four main areas. One is raw materials — cotton, for example — and how we grow the raw materials that are needed for our products. There’s manufacturing. We source Target brand products from more than 2,700 manufacturing facilities around the world.
Then we’ve got our direct operations. Distribution centers, stores, even some of our headquarter locations are in areas directly impacted by water scarcity, water quality, and stormwater flows.
The last area is beyond the fence-line in our manufacturing and our store and distribution communities. We’re focused on water quantity, quality, and access.
Which goals has Target set?
We’ve got an aspirational goal to have net-positive water quality in our priority watersheds. When we announced the freshwater stewardship strategy earlier this year, we put together several goals that ladder up to the net-positive goal.
The first is to have an absolute water reduction by 15% in stores, distribution centers, and headquarters locations by 2025. We had been at 10% and it was relative. We made a more aggressive goal in moving from a relative to an absolute and from 10% to 15%.
Then, within our manufacturing facilities, by 2022 we have committed to improving water efficiency in textile dyeing and finishing factories located in priority watersheds by 15%. Where we see the material impacts is in our owned-brand manufacturers. The goal is do more with less water.
By 2025, we are working toward 100% of our garment-washed owned-brand apparel having water-saving design principles. That means we’re collaborating with our product design and development teams.
The last is having all our owned-brand apparel textile facilities comply with the Zero Discharge Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) progressive level watershed standard by 2025. We signed on this year. It’s a commitment that lots of other organizations follow.
What steps are you taking to achieve these goals?
We have been working with the Apparel Impact Institute, which is a collaboration of brands, manufacturers, and industry associations. It’s how we come together as users of water in the same community watersheds to select, fund, and scale projects quickly.
NRDC has a program, Clean by Design, and we’ve been partnering with them since 2012. There is also a program we support called the Vietnam Improvement Program. Our partnerships with Clean by Design and the Vietnam Improvement Program have saved 3 million cubic meters of water across our supply chain since 2011.
We just began a partnership with Conserva Irrigation on water conservation within our direct operations where we’re optimizing outdoor irrigation systems. We’re going to look to scale this irrigation program to more than 300 stores in 2018.
As you pursue water stewardship, what are the biggest challenges and how are you addressing them?
At a macro level, clean water sources are disappearing at an alarming rate. The biggest challenge is how does a company think about the responsibilities we have, what we can be doing, and how fast we can be doing it? Who can we partner with to contribute to the reversal of some of these trends?
We have great engagement already with other retailers and brands. For example, we’re working on a freshwater basin program with WWF in Taihu basin in China, which is surrounding one of our factory communities. We’re there with a lot of other retailers and apparel brands that are committed to ensuring that the Taihu basin community has access to freshwater resources.
Which tools and resources have been helpful?
We joined the ZDHC Roadmap to Zero program. They have wastewater guidelines for retailers and manufacturers. They’re designed to help us reduce chemicals in the manufacturing process, and prevent them from being discharged into wastewater and into surrounding communities. Other organizations are members and we can learn from them.
We’re part of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition. The HIGG Index is something we apply in our factories.
When we announced the water strategy, we committed to investing $1 million with Water.org to look at access to safe water in the communities that surround our factories. We started in Northern India. As a leading water access NGO, they will be providing resources that will allow us to support our goals.
What’s next?
With Water.org, we’ve just begun sifting through initial geographies and community watersheds we want to serve. We are also focusing on water access issues, even within the United States. We are participating in Ceres’ Connect the Drops campaign, which is advancing solutions in California’s water-stressed areas. Water in our agricultural supply chain was also something we talked about in our initial strategy release.
The work is exciting because it connects to many other priority areas for the company. We’re just getting started.
