Better for the planet

Why responsible water management is important to us? 

Embedded water is the water “hidden” in the products, services, and processes customers buy and use every day. This water often goes unseen by the end-user, but that water has been consumed throughout the value chain, which makes creation of that product or service possible. Water Calculator

Food production is reliant on water. Therefore, the global availability of unpolluted water is essential to our ability to provide a safe, reliable, and affordable supply of high-quality fresh produce, ingredients, and other products. We recognise that Sainsbury's is reliant on water, but our operations also impact water use and water availability across the supply chain, which is why water is a core element of the Better for the Environment pillar of our Plan for Better. 

Water poses direct physical risks such as water quality or pollution, water scarcity, flood and drought risk. However, water risks also have wider impacts including affecting wider ecosystem heath and species and livelihoods and human rights in the form of income, access to safe drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and political economies because several businesses, communities, and ecosystems rely on and impact water, not just agriculture. Water is part of a complex interconnected impact web, but as a result of this responsible water management and water stewardship activities pose a variety of opportunities and can positively impact our value chain and climate resilience beyond just water.

 Our progress so far

For further information on our performance, please visit our Reports & Policies page for our Plan for Better report and CDP water disclosure.

Water stewardship in our own operations

We are driving towards water neutrality across the business by 2040. We use about a billion litres of water a year less than we did in 2005 and continue to review every aspect of water across the business, measuring and lowering the amount of water used across our estate as much as possible.

Tracking water use
An important first step in our water-saving strategy was for us to understand how much water we are currently using. We now ensure that every site has a meter reading taken at a minimum of once every other month, supported with automated meter reading (AMR) data at some of our high consuming sites.  We have created a benchmark for all sites, so we can see when stores are using more water than they should and spot opportunities to reduce water in stores. We can also monitor the success of our water-saving technologies, from rainwater harvesting to water-saving taps and waterless urinals.

Rainwater harvesting
We continue to roll out rainwater harvesting systems across our estate in order to recycle water. We currently have over 130 rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems across our estate and we installed our first micro RWH system in Balderton in 2021.

Self-supply
In 2021, we decided to take control of our own water supply and move to self-supply. This means that we buy water supply and wastewater services from the water company and provide our own retail services. Self-supply enables us to have greater control over our water management, including meter readings, accuracy of data and future water reduction activities. Our English estate is now 100 per cent self-supply.  

Replenish 
In 2023, we started piloting the Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA – Replenish) methodology to support us in reaching our water neutrality target. We have purchased Replenish volumes in the Wyre catchment in Lancashire, which will annually replenish the volumes of water that we use in this catchment area across four stores back into local natural ecosystems, also reducing flood risk.  

We have expanded on this pilot, purchasing additional Replenish volumes in two other catchments – the Beult in the South-East and the Cocker in North-West. Both projects are led by local Rivers Trusts and will be implementing Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to reduce flood risk and improve water quality for the target areas.

Water discharge quality 
We avoid creating trade effluent where possible, but around 100 of our sites do produce some effluent. As the water we use is disposed of via local municipality sewage, we have ensured discharge consents are obtained from the relevant authorities. We want to make sure that we don’t contribute to water pollution and environmental degradation, so we monitor the amount and type of effluent discharged. This helps to ensure that we’re adhering to the parameters and limits on discharge quantities, chemical threshold and matter restrictions stated in the trade effluent consents issued to us.  

Our suppliers take samples at least annually at all sites with a discharge consent in place to verify compliance. The sampling frequency is risk-based (the highest risk of non-compliance will be sampled more frequently) with data stored centrally for each discharge point. 

The reason we don't treat discharge
All the water used in our operations is discharged into foul drains and sewers which then lead to sewerage treatment works that are managed by the water authority. Wastewater treatment operators are required to treat wastewater to the correct standard as per the Urban Wastewater Treatment (England and Wales) Regulations 1994. We do not generate any industrial wastewater and are therefore not required to carry out any treatment to our wastewater, complying with the Urban Wastewater Treatment Regulations. 

Water stewardship beyond our own operations

In 2022, we carried out a water foot-printing exercise to understand the importance of water across our supply chain. Our modelled supply chain water footprint represents 98% of our total water footprint, with the lower tiers of our supply chain making up the majority of our water footprint.

Understanding our impacts and dependencies on water through this exercise has allowed us to prioritise areas of the business to focus on to deliver the greatest impact on water.

Water stewardship is commonly defined as “the use of water that is socially equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically beneficial, achieved through a stakeholder-inclusive process that involves both site and catchment level actions.”Alliance for Water Stewardship. We align our work on water with the WWF Water Stewardship Ladder (below). 

WWF Water Stewardship Ladder

Key Achievements 

We have completed a saliency assessment to identify our most salient environmental and human rights risks which you can read more about here. In addition to this we have mapped our global water footprint and determined a list of our sourcing regions facing the most pertinent water risks. 

Now that the most pertinent risks and risk-regions have been identified, we can create medium to long term strategies to mitigate the associated risks and drive targeted action. This includes collaboratively creating relevant nature positive & climate resilient strategies in partnership with our supply chains, engaging industry partners in collective action water stewardship projects, and implementing ways to ensure compliance and data availability (e.g. certification).  

Many suppliers are already successfully disclosing their water actions through Higg (Textiles), M2030 / CDP (Food & GM), and Archilles (GNFR). Jeanologica Environmental Impact Measurement is also being tested in Sainsbury’s textile supply chains.  

Sainsbury’s is contributing to eight collective action projects globally to support landscape level sustainable water management through stakeholder engagement and nature-based solutions. These projects are delivering action in high-water risk catchments in Spain, Kenya, South Africa, Peru, and the UK and focus on improving climate resilience and implementing sustainable water stewardship practices. These projects are informed by stakeholder research to gain a holistic understanding of local contexts, opportunities, and challenges to understand the broader societal impacts of un-sustainable water use. Find out more about our collective action projects here and here.  

For example, Sainsburys has supported the re-introduction of native species to restore natural ecosystems and replenish water aquafers in Peru, leading to water, climate, and nature benefits including reduced flood risk which you can read more about here. 

Sainsbury’s is a signatory to the Courtauld 2030 Water Roadmap, the WWF Sustainable Basket, the WWF’s Retailers’ Commitment for Nature, and is also a member of the FNET Climate and Human Rights working group.  

Moving forward we will continue to consider the impact of embedded water on environmental and social outcomes and improve our farm-level data to enable us to conduct robust risk-mapping of our priority supply chains, alongside looking into ways we can support enhanced water stewardship via our Making it Happen Action group on water.

The Courtauld 2030 Water Roadmap
A critical component of water stewardship is collective action, which is why we are signatories to the Courtauld 2030 Water Roadmap - a roadmap towards water security for food & drink supply. This practical response for the protection of water resources brings together food and drink businesses to collectively take action in water catchments, with interventions led by delivery partners The Rivers Trust, Good Stuff International and WWF.

The overarching goal of the Roadmap is for 50% of the UK's fresh food to be sourced from areas with sustainable water management by 2030, and there are specific actions for businesses that combine to deliver this.

For retailers, this includes:

• Monitoring water use in our own operations
• Identifying water risk hotspots in our supply chains
• Supporting collective action projects in at least 3 strategically important sourcing areas
• Advocating for better water governance

The methodology for calculating the sustainable water management metric was outlined in 2023. For UK and EU production, the Good Ecological Status (under the Water Framework Directive) of the corresponding water body from which a product is sourced is the preferred method for determining sustainable water management. This metric relates to the condition of the wider catchment, rather than the practices or processes on the sourcing farm. For production outside the UK and EU, the WWF is creating a dataset to determine the sustainable water management of key sourcing catchments for UK imports.  

This sustainable water management metric has been adopted by the WWF Sustainable Basket, which we are also signatories to. As part of this, we will report our progress using this methodology from 2024. 

In May 2023, we worked with WWF, WRAP and the other signatories to the WWF’s Retailers’ Commitment for Nature to agree a revised set of leadership actions and associated funding contributions intended to drive progress towards the milestones set out in the Roadmap. These actions are intended to address systemic water risks across key sourcing areas: 

• Advocacy for good governance, policy change and implementation
• Identifying water risks and priorities for action and reporting against targets
• Collective action projects in priority at-risk sourcing areas
• Consistent guidance and standards for supply chains

Water Roadmap Collective Action Projects
We support seven collective action projects through the Courtauld 2030 Roadmap, all situated in important sourcing areas for our supply chain, across the UK, Spain, South Africa, Peru and Kenya. The projects are delivered by The Rivers Trust, Good Stuff International and WWF, and are tackling the most salient water risks in these regions.

Read more about the collective action projects we support