Reimagining a global CPG company’s corporate water strategy
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Published April 2, 2025
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Challenge
As a global consumer goods company with several hundred brands and tens of thousands of products reliant on water and agriculture, our client had long viewed water as a fundamental business risk. The company made great strides in weaving water risk into product innovation and research and development and was well regarded for creating water-saving products. To support this work, our client also set an ambitious, project-based 2030 water stewardship goal encompassing its highest-risk factories.
However, at the time of this engagement, the company was undergoing changes to its organizational structure, business lines, and corporate leadership. These changes, which altered budget allocation and reporting processes for its sustainability and water teams, added further complexity to the internal barriers our client was facing on its water stewardship journey:
While the company had a sizable sustainability team, it was operating with a one-person water stewardship team, which was considerably smallerthan its peers in terms of dedicated resources.
Water stewardship was not historically viewed as a key part of corporate sustainability strategy, limiting the impact of both departments and creating multiple inefficiencies.
Although our client had made measurable progress toward its 2030 goal, with nearly 2 dozen water restoration and soil health projects implemented at facilities worldwide, these initiatives were solely focused on its operations and KPIs were effort-based as opposed to impact-based.
The CPG company had yet to formalize goals or develop a strategy for water stewardship in its supply chain.
Our client's portfolio consisted of hundreds of brands and business lines across the world, each with hundreds to thousands of consumer products. The global reach of its supply chain made capturing supplier data and implementing supplier-specific water programs a serious challenge.
Given the changing leadership and more stringent budget allocation processes, there was sizable opportunity for executive leadership and teams across the organization to better understand the business value of water stewardship strategies.
While the company had a sizable sustainability team, it was operating with a one-person water stewardship team, which was considerably smallerthan its peers in terms of dedicated resources.
Water stewardship was not historically viewed as a key part of corporate sustainability strategy, limiting the impact of both departments and creating multiple inefficiencies.
Although our client had made measurable progress toward its 2030 goal, with nearly 2 dozen water restoration and soil health projects implemented at facilities worldwide, these initiatives were solely focused on its operations and KPIs were effort-based as opposed to impact-based.
The CPG company had yet to formalize goals or develop a strategy for water stewardship in its supply chain.
Our client's portfolio consisted of hundreds of brands and business lines across the world, each with hundreds to thousands of consumer products. The global reach of its supply chain made capturing supplier data and implementing supplier-specific water programs a serious challenge.
Given the changing leadership and more stringent budget allocation processes, there was sizable opportunity for executive leadership and teams across the organization to better understand the business value of water stewardship strategies.
The consumer goods company engaged Earth Finance to rethink the viability of its water stewardship goals given its changing business structure and reorient its strategy to encompass the entire value chain and position itself as a leader on water.
Our approach
Our team partnered with the global CPG company to analyze progress against its peers, identify gaps and corresponding KPIs, and ultimately refresh its corporate water strategy in line with its new, value chain-aligned goals. Here’s a closer look at our process:
1) Peer benchmarking and industry analysis. Using publicly available reports and data, we analyzed the actions of 9 corporate water leaders across various industries to help our client understand where they stood in relation to their peers. After assessing and ranking each company’s maturity across our 6-pillar benchmarking framework, we were able to determine how water was integrated into their broader sustainability agenda, if water was seen as a compliance only or business value driving activity, how the value of water initiatives was measured, and more.
Through this process, and by visualizing the water use and water efficiency of all mapped companies, we determined that our client landed in the middle of the pack on water stewardship in relation to its peers.
2) Gap analysis and stakeholder engagement. We then conducted stakeholder interviews and assessed data and internal reports provided from 20+ existing sites to determine alignment with the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Standard and identify gaps in the company’s water strategy. As part of our stakeholder engagement efforts, we interviewed leadership from sustainable sourcing, water stewardship, regional facilities teams, and the company’s climate and nature fund.
From these conversations, for example, we uncovered the need for a mechanism to educate regional facilities on the value of water strategies and learned that water projects weren’t typically considered in the company’s internal fund. Based on our finds, we identified 4 high-level recommendations to address gaps:
Scale core water stewardship team
to align with industry benchmarks and drive program success.
Leverage existing funding mechanisms
and maximize internal resources by demonstrating positive ROI of water initiatives.
Enable site-level adoption
by developing a toolkit to drive facility outreach and scalable stewardship.
Develop a more holistic water strategy
by expanding focus to agricultural supply chains.
3) KPI and narrative development. To help our client develop a next-generation water strategy in line with the recommendations above, we hosted an interdepartmental workshop to rethink their goals and KPIs. For instance, during the workshop, we discussed the need to map water risks to specific commodities, create watershed-level intervention strategies in partnership with local communities, and integrate supply chain projects into the company’s 2030 goal.
The new 2030 goals created coming out of the workshop allocated half of the company’s exiting project-based goal to include supply chain projects and replaced its effort-based operational facilities target to a net positive water goal. As part of this workstream, we also worked with our client to frame and evangelize a narrative about the value of water among new corporate leadership.
4) Planning and financial analysis. Finally, we created a 5-year roadmap sequencing and prioritizing projects based on water risk, business value, partner readiness, and stacked benefits (climate, nature, and social impact benefits stemming from water stewardship initiatives). This also entailed modeling the investment cost of various water initiatives, quantified as cost per cubic meter of water replenished, to become net water positive. For our client, initiatives ranged from 50¢ to $92 per cubic meter.
Project outcomes
With a more holistic, reimagined corporate water strategy in hand, our multinational CPG client is now in a position to elevate its status as a water stewardship leader. More importantly, the company has a deeper understanding of the business risk and business value of water across its entire value chain, not just its operations.
Thanks to this project, the consumer goods company is fully empowered to:
Strengthen its competitive position and social license to operate in multiple high-risk watersheds.
Build long-term business resilience with targeted projects addressing water risk across the full agricultural supply chain.
Quantify the business value of water stewardship initiatives to gain buy-in among key executive stakeholders.
Close critical gaps in water stewardship strategy with a robust costed plan.
Secure funding necessary to implement high-impact initiatives and reach refreshed 2030 water goals.
Advocate for additional human resources on the water stewardship team.
Key wins
100+ initiatives
Initiatives analyzed for cost per cubic meter of water stewardship
10+ stakeholders
High-impact stakeholders engaged across business units
$1 - $90 per m3
Approximate range of cost of water stewardship initiatives per cubic meter
300+ data points
Unique, water-focused data points considered in benchmarking analysis
Moving forward, the company is increasing investment in water replenishment, soil health, water access, and other initiatives in its most water-stressed regions both operationally and across its global supply chain. This targeted approach, supported by the foundation laid by the reimagined corporate water strategy, is enabling our client to more meaningfully address the business risk of water and preserve its long-term business model.
Want to explore how to elevate your water and nature initiatives? Our team brings decades of experience helping companies tap into the business value of water and nature stewardship and creating holistic, business-aligned strategies.
