Summary
Discover how Colgate-Palmolive is advancing water stewardship and moving towards its 2025 Sustainability & Social Impact Strategy. Collaborating with Waterplan, Colgate-Palmolive tackles the complexities of gathering and centralizing water data, understanding local water risks, and taking action head-on. This collaboration has already yielded positive results, including reducing the time needed to collect and analyze water risk data, and aligning the company on decision-making. Dive into this case study to see how innovative technology and strategic collaborations make a tangible difference in Colgate’s global water sustainability efforts.
Introduction
Cecilia Coates is the Climate and Water Lead at Colgate-Palmolive, and she manages the development and implementation of the company's Water Stewardship Strategy, which is embedded into the company’s 2025 Sustainability & Social Impact Strategy. The strategy aims to ensure water stewardship, security, and resilience across the value chain, protecting ecosystems and supporting water access in the communities where they operate. That means taking care of water and conserving its use, helping people access safe water, and mitigating risks associated with water scarcity.
Some of Cecilia’s responsibilities to achieve the water strategy include convening Colgate’s multidisciplinary Water Security Task Force to progress on the company's strategy to measure and manage water risks, managing water data to create analytics and tracking of their main water KPIs, and preparing content and data for external reporting. Moreover, she actively attends meetings and speaks at conferences with other companies and organizations to discuss best practices and collective action opportunities. She also engages with NGOs and partners to help provide communities with access to clean water.
Technology solutions for real-world water challenges
Colgate-Palmolive worked with Waterplan to tackle challenges in gathering and centralizing water data from various data sources, analyzing water risks in-depth, and taking impactful action on water.
Centralizing Multiple Water Data Sources
Colgate-Palmolive’s access to external and internal water information had been complex and often fragmented. Significant time was required to gather and integrate data from diverse water risk sources and water projects across their sites. They operated in a more reactive mode, when certain needs emerged such as reporting deadlines or internal updates requiring them to reach out to the different stakeholders and assemble information manually. Consequently, Colgate-Palmolive’s water risk management process leaned towards a reactive stance grounded in historical trends rather than a proactive, forward-looking approach.
Waterplan has helped the Company develop and execute a holistic and impactful water stewardship strategy.
Waterplan provided the ability to track different dimensions of water risks in one place and establish a combined process. For example, bringing together information about a region's regulatory, infrastructure, scarcity, and social dynamics into a holistic and interdisciplinary risk assessment, and sharing with Colgate People from different functional areas. This is important because water risk can manifest in many forms, from operational disruption to brand reputation.
Quantifying the Financial Impact of Water Risks for Informed Decision-Making
Besides centralizing water data, Waterplan’s technology assesses water risks in depth at different locations where Colgate operates. The analysis utilizes external data and involves Colgate teams at each site. Incorporating company-specific information ultimately helps better understand the potential costs of water risks, which is needed to communicate the potential business impact and inform decisions.
“Colgate-Palmolive is now able to put water risk assessments together in less time, consolidate the results, and standardize the presentation of this information. For the business, it has helped advance our commitment to water stewardship and resilience.” - said Cecilia Coates.
Taking Action on Water
With a clear business case to invest in water, Colgate implements different water initiatives across sites. Waterplan has also helped them connect their sites with other third-party experts to help them execute their action plans. Colgate’s teams connect, exchange data and collaborate to develop a comprehensive risk assessment and action plan at each site. This information is stored in the platform, for the sites to follow up on, and shared with their Corporate Sustainability team and Water Security Task Force. The platform also brings together functions such as Legal, Engineering, EHS, Finance, Risk Management, and others.
Takeaways
The collaboration between Colgate-Palmolive and Waterplan represents an innovative approach to water stewardship, leveraging technology to measure and monetize water risks effectively, align the company on the business case of water, and drive impactful action that addresses water challenges. By leveraging advanced water data management and analytics, Colgate-Palmolive progresses towards its 2025 Sustainability Strategy and sets a compelling example for others in sustainable water management, illustrating the power of technology in facilitating meaningful environmental impact.
“Being able to monetize water risk is the next frontier of water stewardship. Corporations speak the language of business, which is currency, so being able to articulate water risks and opportunities in a monetized way will make decision-making easier. Even if water stewardship does not always have a financial ROI, articulating dollars at risk can help perform cost-benefit analyses, value-at-risk calculations, and other measures that resonate with key audiences and drive action inside and outside the fence. Ultimately, this will lead to society putting a more fair “value” on water, and it will bring water users and stakeholders together to partner and build collective resilience in our shared water resources.” - Cecilia Coates, Climate and Water Lead, Colgate-Palmolive.
Colgate-Palmolive is now able to put water risk assessments together in less time, consolidate the results, and standardize the presentation of this information. For the business, it has helped advance our commitment to water stewardship and resilience.
Cecilia Coates
Climate and Water Lead
