Nestlé Waters has announced that it will strengthen its collaboration with the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) to certify 20 factories by 2020. The company has already certified four Nestlé Waters bottling facilities: one in Sheikhupura, Pakistan, and three in California (Ontario, Sacramento and Livermore). 

It plans to certify additional sites in Africa, Asia, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the United States as part of its 2020 objective.

Nestlé Waters believes the announcement represents an important step toward the commitment to continuous improvement in their water stewardship practices, helping to address shared water challenges and ensuring the sustainability of water resources.

“Nestlé Waters’ strategic commitment to implementing the AWS Standard sets an example, demonstrating the importance of water stewardship and the business benefits it can deliver,” says Adrian Sym, AWS CEO. “Through our global membership, we will be calling on and supporting other major businesses to follow Nestlé Waters’ lead in making meaningful and independently verifiable contributions to our shared water challenges through the implementation of the AWS Standard.”

“Collaborating with AWS is a new step on our water stewardship journey which will allow us to further engage with local communities to secure the sustainability of the local water resources wher we operate,” says Maurizio Patarnello, Nestlé Waters CEO. “By broadly implementing this standard, we will pave the way and show that meaningful collaboration is possible for the future of water.”

Global standard for stewardship
Launched in 2014 by industry leaders, public sector agencies, academic institutes and prominent environmental conservation groups such as The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund, AWS is the first global Water Stewardship Standard for measuring responsible water stewardship across social, environmental and economic criteria.

The rigorous process to become AWS certified further illustrates Nestlé Waters’ continued commitment toward water stewardship, Nestlé notes. Certified sites’ progress against the 30 Core AWS criteria is verified by credible, independent, third-party certification bodies.

Nestlé points out that Nestlé Waters has been engaged in long-term collaborative solutions, at both factory and watershed levels, for 25 years to preserve the quantity and quality of local water resources. Programs like Agrivair initiated in 1992 in Vittel (France) or Eco-Broye in Henniez (Switzerland) are regularly highlighted as inspiring models for effective collaborative solutions in this area.