Celebrating World Water Day: P&G's Water Positive Future Strategy

Water is essential both for making and using P&G products. Through our Water Positive Future Strategy, P&G aspires to contribute to a future where water can sustain people, nature, and P&G operations now and for generations to come. Our ambitions focus on reducing water in our operations, helping restore water in water-stressed areas where we operate, and responding to water challenges through innovation and partnerships.

Reducing Water in Our Operations

By 2030, P&G has a goal to increase water efficiency at P&G facilities by 35% per unit of production vs. 2010 baseline, and to recycle and reuse 5 billion liters of water in P&G facilities annually. Our facilities have a sustained focus on driving water efficiency, making strong progress to date. As of fiscal year 2024, we’ve increased water efficiency by 26%, on track to achieve our 2030 goal. In FY24 alone, we recycled 3.49 billion liters of water – enough to fill approximately 1,400 Olympic swimming pools. We have identified innovative solutions for our sites to continue significant progress, and we're on track to achieve this 2030 goal as well.

Restoring Water in Water-Stressed Areas Where We Operate

Water scarcity is a complex issue that varies by region, and addressing it requires understanding the local context. P&G works closely with on-the-ground partners with a deep knowledge of the local challenges, communities and landscapes to support projects that improve, better manage, or protect freshwater resources in 18 water-stressed areas around the world where we operate. This can include projects that are helping to restore wetlands, replenish aquifers, improve irrigation efficiency or water quality, and more – including the project seen in the photo below.

Responding to Water Challenges through Innovation and Partnerships

Our experience in innovation and consumer understanding can help unlock new solutions to water challenges and enable people to reduce their environmental impact at home, while continuing to enjoy delightful in-use experiences.

Our partnership with the 50 Liter Home Coalition exemplifies this, aiming to create a resilient water future where 50 liters of daily water use per person feels like 500 — the average per capita daily household water use in some parts of the world. The Coalition’s pilot in Los Angeles, which recently concluded, is showing us how our experience in innovation and consumer understanding can help unlock new solutions to water challenges, and help consumers live more sustainably while continuing to enjoy delightful in-use experiences.

And the Coalition just announced the final results of the LA pilot, where after two years, households used 21 gallons (79 liters) indoors per person per day on average less than half the official LA average of 48 gallons (182 liters), with the majority of participants reporting that their daily routines had become easier and more enjoyable, with less time spent on mundane chores. The results show smarter product design and high-efficiency appliances and fixtures help improve people’s overall experience at home while delivering water savings.

We’re innovating to deliver superior performance through our brands, like Cascade, Dawn, Tide and Swiffer -– and also helping people to save water or energy at home.

During World Water Day and beyond, we look forward to continuing our work with our partners, communities and stakeholders to help address water challenges. For ongoing updates about our goals and progress, you can visit our ESG Investor Portal and explore our latest Citizenship Report.

P&G’s comprehensive strategy toward a water positive future includes reducing water in our operations, restoring water in 18 water-stressed areas around the world and responding to water challenges through innovation and partnerships.

One of these partnerships that’s helping us respond to water challenges — the 50 Liter Home Coalition — recently recognized an exciting milestone when its Los Angeles, California, pilot project demonstrated that water efficiency can be both achievable and, importantly, delightful for consumers! The pilot program achieved a reduction of more than 20% vs the control group in indoor water use over the course of one year.

Read the Coalition’s press release here.

VISION: Making 50 liters of water feel like 500 liters. As founding members of the 50 Liter Home Coalition, our vision is to develop innovations that could help create a resilient water future where 50 liters of daily water use per person feels like 500 — the average per capita daily household water use in some parts of the world.

Importantly, saving water was combined with improved consumer delight. In addition to lower water and energy bills, a majority of participants in the pilot reported a positive impact of the combination of provided products, appliances and fixtures on their quality of life at home, including the feedback:

• “[The pilot] has made my life easier and more pleasant to do the things I really didn’t enjoy before. I like laundry now!”
• "There's an added value [in] understanding that we're actually saving water, even though it doesn't feel like we've really changed a lot of our behaviors."

How? The Los Angeles pilot brought together P&G, IKEA, Kohler Co., Electrolux Group, U.S. Green Building Council California with Flume, Droople and more partners to implement a whole-home approach to water efficiency. The pilot involves 31 single family homes where the Coalition monitored — with the consent of pilot participants — daily water and hot water usage (in liters) per day per person. Half the homes were retrofitted with fixtures, appliances and P&G products, and the other half received none. These fixtures, appliances and products are designed to help save water and energy.

The results of the first phase of the pilot show that indoor water use for participants who received appliances, fixtures and products averaged 50% less than the average usage in Los Angeles, including*:

• Reduction of daily hot water use by 44% from kitchen faucets
• Reduction of weekly hot water use by 55% in laundry
• Reduction of daily hot water use by 23% overall

And the 50L Home Coalition isn’t stopping here. Insights from the LA pilot will help inform future projects, including a new pilot in London being launched in 2025-2026.

This is great news because at P&G, we want to enable consumers to reduce their environmental impact by making it easier to reduce resources (such as energy, water and waste) when they use our products. We’re focused on developing innovations that deliver irresistible superiority that is also more sustainable.

Learn more about how P&G is contributing to a water positive future.

Learn more about the work of the 50 Liter Home Coalition.

Visit the 50L Home LA Pilot Website for a full list of P&G products and partner appliances and fixtures shared with 50L Home pilot participants, including:

Cascade Platinum Plus: Skipping the sink and running an ENERGY STAR® certified dishwasher* with Cascade Platinum Plus instead of washing dishes by hand helps consumers save water.

Dawn Powerwash: Spray-activated suds eliminate the need for water when hand washing dishes until the final rinse — cutting the amount of water used compared to traditional dish soaps.

Tide: When people in North America switch from hot to cold water washing, they use an average of 90% less energy in the wash cycle and save money on their yearly energy bills.

Swiffer: Using a Swiffer WetJet instead of a mop and bucket can save up to 70 gallons of water a year.