Collective Impact Goals: The Next Transformation in Corporate Water Sustainability?
By John Sabo, director, Arizona State University’s Future H2O
Lots of companies are moving from focusing on internal water efficiencies — within their four walls — toward water stewardship outside their four walls. We need to be able to help those companies learn from those that have already made this journey.
But what about those that are already focused outside the four walls? What’s their next step? How do they make what they’re doing even more transformative?
Partnering is the usual answer, along with setting even more ambitious sustainability goals that make the company more attractive as a green business.
But those are still operations-oriented moves.
I think the next quantum leap could be companies setting impact goals together.
Two Ways to Set Collective Water Sustainability Impact Goals
There are two ways corporate collective impact goals could happen:
1) Collective action in a basin where they all work, and for which the goals are impact-oriented rather than operations-oriented;
2) Collective action across multiple basins, including some in which each individual participant doesn’t have operations.
Think about it for a minute. You don’t have an Intel in every basin. Nor a Facebook. Nor even a Coca-Cola bottling facility. But each of those companies has customers in every river basin on Earth. So why should they just care about sustainability in the basins where they have operations?
The first kind of collective impact goal is already happening in a few places across the United States:
- In California through the California Water Action Collaborative, which includes Anheuser-Busch, Campbell’s, Coca-Cola, Driscoll, Ecolab, General Mills, Miller Coors, Microsoft, Nestle, Pepsico, P&G, Target and others;
- In the ACF river basin in the Southeastern United States, with Coca-Cola, Delta, Miller-Coors and others;
- It hasn’t happened yet in Texas — but it could transform the way we deliver water to the environment across the state’s coastal basins. Coca-Cola, Dell, NRG, AT&T, Dow, Exxon and American Airlines could all together announce a collective goal for a Texas basin where they all work — for example, the Trinity.
- And the big Kahuna, of course, is the Mississippi — supply-chain source supreme.
But companies could also partner across basins with other companies, even in basins where they don’t have operations — and view those water gains as counting toward their sustainability goals.
Think about it for a minute. You don’t have an Intel in every basin. Nor a Facebook. Nor even a Coca-Cola bottling facility. But each of those companies has customers in every river basin on Earth. So why should they just care about sustainability in the basins where they have operations?
Incentivizing this wouldn’t be as hard as it might seem. Metrics for sustainability are pretty flexible; the obstacles are board and shareholder perception.
But measuring collective water sustainability across basins would force companies to think a little bit more like Coca-Cola, which has a wide distribution system and thus takes a global perspective on things. To sell more in a region, you need to be a good corporate citizen in that region.
More collective corporate action within basins — and starting to think collectively across basins — are two options that could together become the next quantum leap for corporate water stewardship.
To learn how ASU’s Future H2O builds opportunities for global water abundance, visit our website and subscribe to our newsletter.
