Outside a dyehouse in India, the river bleeds red with synthetic dye spills. In Texas, cotton farmers struggle to make ends meet after an extended period of drought decimates their yield, while on the other side of the world, their Chinese counterparts battle with flash floods, mudslides and landslides. At a tannery in Tuscany, workers rush to deal with a continuous stream of toxic wastewater.
Fashion’s impact on water is both sprawling and seismic, affecting both global sustainability goals and hyper-local communities. But few fashion companies have a strategy in place to deal with their water impacts, and those that do are typically limited to doing less harm rather than proactively doing good. French luxury conglomerate Kering is hoping to change that, with its first dedicated water strategy, published this morning.
“The world is facing unprecedented water scarcity, and there are more and more complex regulations linked to water around the world,” says Kering’s chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer, Marie-Claire Daveu, in an exclusive interview with Vogue Business. “Most of Kering’s activities need some water, from raw materials to production processes. It’s the right time for us to reduce water-related risks in our supply chains and go beyond a reductions-only approach to be truly transformative.”
It’s time fashion woke up to its water impacts, says Richard Wielechowski, head of the textiles programme at Planet Tracker. Last year, the non-profit think tank reported that 90 per cent of fashion brands do not publicly disclose any water-related risks, and those that do mostly focus on water consumption. Among the 29 fashion companies assessed, Kering ranked third for the amount of water disclosures, not pollution or droughts and flooding, after Hanesbrands and Gap. In July 2023, Kering competitor LVMH announced plans to curb its water consumption by 30 per cent by 2030, in response to French legislation designed to temper the country’s water usage in the face of extensive droughts, but again, this was limited to water usage.
“To put it simply, water is life,” explains Wielechowski. “Almost every business will have some water impacts, but fashion has a particularly significant water footprint, and that water footprint is often in areas that are already water-stressed. So there’s an obvious social impact on local populations and a reputational risk to fashion businesses contributing harm in this way, but there is also a business risk for those that rely on water for their raw materials and processes.” He offers the example of a local government retracting a company’s license to operate where there isn’t enough drinking water, but factories continue to produce jeans (a significantly water-intensive item) for export.
Kering’s water strategy is the first to address the lengthy impacts of fashion’s water pollution and consumption on global manufacturing countries. But experts say it’s just the start of what should be an industry-wide reform.
Local solutions to a global problem
Kering’s “water positive” strategy has three prongs, each of which will be tailored based on geography. The first is raw materials, which Daveu says account for two-thirds of Kering’s total water impacts. On this front, the group says it will lean into regenerative agriculture, building on the momentum from its Regenerative Fund for Nature, established with Conservation International in 2021. For each of its main raw materials, Kering has then mapped where its biggest water impacts are clustered. Through this process, it has identified 10 freshwater basins around the world, which will become the focal point of its strategy. In each basin, it will establish a water resilience lab, working with local stakeholders to develop and — crucially — invest in localised solutions. Then, there is a water positive stewardship programme, which seeks to promote water efficiency, improve water quality and reduce water consumption across key supplier collaborators.
The first water resilience lab to open will be in the Arno Basin in Tuscany, home to many of Kering’s own tanneries as well as its supplier tanneries. It will launch in autumn, with four more to follow by 2030 and the remainder by 2035. The other basins will be in France, Spain, Türkiye, Mongolia, India, Peru, Argentina, South Africa and Australia. Each will have its own targets, laid out in collaboration with local stakeholders. “When you speak about climate, it’s very global. But with water, like biodiversity, the approach has to be very local,” says Daveu. “It also has to be collaborative, because we are not the only ones who want to use these water basins.”
The aim is to become “net water-positive” by 2050, with “measured net-positive water impacts” in the 10 priority basins by 2035. At Arno Basin, for example, Kering aims to reduce its water withdrawal by 21 per cent. Setting these targets will allow Kering to unlock funding, continues Daveu. “That could be an investment to reduce water consumption in tanneries, or to help suppliers improve the quality of wastewater. It could come back to regenerative agriculture.”
Collaborating with — and funding — local solutions is key, but experts warn that corporations getting involved with something as fundamental as water — which really ought to be in the domain of communities and governments — could have unintended consequences. “We have seen many examples of corporations taking advantage of water in the name of developing interventions. They pollute the water by establishing industries around it, and then treat the water and sell it back to people as a commodity,” says Dr Hamidul Huq, a professor in the department of environment and development studies at United International University in Bangladesh. “These companies must understand the local people’s needs and the state of water in the country they are operating.”
A tale of risk and resilience
Around the world, fashion supply chains are being disrupted by extreme weather events where there is either too much water (flooding) or too little (drought). This will only get worse as the climate crisis intensifies. As Daveu notes, Kering’s supply chain depends on water, while simultaneously impacting the quality, quantity and accessibility of it. The group’s main environmental risks are linked to water too — notably, the increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events like floods, droughts, landslides, storms and fires — all of which can prompt supply chain shocks, raw material scarcity and price increases.
Indeed, the Earth has a finite amount of freshwater, and the United Nations expected demand to exceed availability by 40 per cent before 2030. “We are a blue planet, but less than one per cent of that water is fresh, accessible and clean,” says Christine Kirchhoff, associate professor at the Penn State Institute of Energy and the Environment. “Focusing on freshwater is a strong approach, especially since it’s much more costly and energy-intensive to make water better once you have already diminished the quality.”
The language of supply chain resilience is crucial to getting executives on board, says Daveu. “The only way to make sustainability credible is to operationalise it and show that it’s moving in the same direction as business,” she explains. “If we want to scale action and transform business models, we need to show the added value of addressing climate, biodiversity and water. You have to frame it as resilience, or a license to operate. If we want a resilient supply chain, we need to have the right amount of water in the right places at the right time. If we don’t address water, we won’t have the raw materials and we won’t be able to make luxury products.”
The challenge for Kering is getting staff to act on water at the same time as climate, biodiversity and the group’s financial targets (last week, Kering posted a 14 per cent drop in sales for Q1). “Everything is linked and everything is exponential. Climate change affects water. If you destroy biodiversity, that affects climate change,” says Daveu. “But if you want to be operational, you have to define specific targets. How do you explain internally that you have to act on all pillars at the same time? It can become quite complex.”
Could Kering cause a cascade?
Kering’s plan was both facilitated and backed by science-based targets for nature, an offshoot of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and its subsidiary Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), introduced in 2020. Kering was among the first brands to pilot science-based targets for nature in 2023 (alongside 16 others, including LVMH, L’Occitane and H&M Group) and was the first fashion company to formally adopt them a year later. But widespread adoption remains elusive, prompting a rallying cry from Textile Exchange earlier this year.
While sizable, Kering cannot fix fashion’s water footprint alone. “Of course, we want to take responsibility for our part, but we also need to engage other people in this strategy,” says Daveu. Her call to action is for other brands — and other industries — to follow suit.
The next step would be to establish standardised metrics that allow for “apples to apples” comparisons, says Wielechowski. But this is far from simple, especially when water demands localised approaches and progress cannot be measured as easily as carbon. “If you release a tonne of CO2 in London, it’s the same as releasing a tonne of CO2 in India. But using a litre of water has a very different impact depending on where you extract it and use it.”
The challenge is overcoming carbon tunnel-vision and pushing for a more mature understanding of water impacts and how to measure them, he continues. “Water today is where carbon was 15 years ago. We are very much in the early stages. So while it’s great to see Kering taking these steps, we need to acknowledge that it will be a learning process.”
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