Governance

Our Commitment to Sustainability

Our core values include Respect for All – which extends not only to our associates, partners and customers, but also to the communities where we live, work and play – and With a Standard of Excellence. We want to exceed all expectations of our stakeholders. Built on these values is our commitment to social responsibility and ensuring we conduct operations in a sustainable, respectful way. We care about the environment and communities that we serve, so we work hard to minimize our environmental footprint and maximize our positive impact by:

Respecting the human rights of the people in our businesses, communities and supply chain;
Innovating and finding new ways to serve our customers sustainably;
Applying best practices to the work we do to reduce waste and our use of natural resources;
Giving back to our communities;
Supporting disaster relief efforts.

OUR ESG INITIATIVES

We have been integrating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles into our daily operations and risk management approaches for many years. Our European operations have been CarbonNeutral® certified for nine years running, and we have developed and implemented programs around water quality and sustainable yield by working alongside highly respected organizations such as the International Water Association in North America and Watercoolers Europe.

We intend to accelerate our sustainable practices in the years ahead through:

Elevating our water stewardship practices through compliance by 2025 with the Alliance for Water Stewardship’s international standards for our owned key spring water sources.
Reducing our carbon footprint through lower greenhouse gas emissions and becoming CarbonNeutral® certified in the United States by the end of 2021.
Continuing sales and distribution of our returnable, refillable, and recyclable 3- and 5-gallon bottles.

2022 UPDATE

Since publishing our inaugural report covering 2020, we have further integrated our ESG strategy across our global business and aligned our operations with our commitments. We made significant progress towards our ESG initiatives in 2022 and achieved new milestones, including:

Appointing a Vice President of ESG who is responsible for supporting and coordinating management’s ESG process and activities.
Achieving CarbonNeutral® Company certification for our global operations in accordance with The CarbonNeutral Protocol, the leading global framework for carbon neutrality.
Continuously investing in low-carbon fleet, adding 70 propane trucks.
Implementing Automatic Route Optimization (ARO), reducing 416,000 miles in 6 months, equivalent to ~700 mt of CO2.
Completing energy efficiency projects, saving 754,876 kWh, or ~535 mt of CO2e.
Joining The Water Council’s WAVE: Water Stewardship Verified program, an independent certification process for water stewardship reporting and verification.
Completing our third year of HR strategy roll-out, focusing on improving the recruitment, onboarding, and exit process.
Finalizing the exit from our single-use retail plastic bottle business across our North American operations, eliminating ~22 million kg of singleusehigh density polyethylene (“HDPE”) plastic annually from our portfolio of drinking water solutions.
Continued Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions reduction performance, reducing our emissions by 5%.
Improved water inventory data collection efforts, achieving 100% primary data for plants and 96% company-wide, an improvement of 6.3% and 68% respectively.
Donating over $1,000,000 between product donations, direct dollar giving and proceeds.