The impacts of climate change and the huge water challenges the world faces are already very clear to see in extreme weather events and with billions already lacking access to clean water and sanitation. We must act now to cut carbon and secure, protect and distribute water – and we are. 

We’ve put sustainability at the heart of our Growth with Purpose strategy to tackle both the climate and water crises. And in 2022 we underlined our commitment to it by restating what drives us as a business with a bold but simple sentence: 

“Our purpose is to bring solutions to the world’s water challenges and accelerate the transition to clean energy.” 

Our accent is on acting now. We’re convinced that, if we dare to take bold action today, we can begin to have real impact on these twin challenges, delivering solutions both within the 2025 timeframe of our Growth with Purpose strategy and well into the future. 

In every crisis, real opportunity

The links between climate and water aren’t always well understood, but the United Nations, as part of its 2018-2028 Decade of Water campaign, has made it crystal clear. It sees climate change as primarily a water crisis, felt in worsening floods, rising sea levels, shrinking ice caps, wildfires, and floods. 

It also sees an immense opportunity for profound change in meeting these challenges. At a time when nearly 1 billion people already lack access to water, and some 2 billion have no sanitation in their homes, the UN makes it clear that managing water sustainably is and will continue to be a vital weapon in combatting the climate crisis. 

This is our call to action.  

Uniquely placed

We see the intimate connections between climate and preserving our most precious resource: water. With 75% of our products used to distribute, treat and store water, we are uniquely placed to understand the water challenges the world currently faces and the potential problems that lie ahead in decades to come.   

We are determined to turn that insight into action quickly – and we’re already making progress.

Transitioning to renewables

We’re aiming to reduce our CO₂ emissions by 75% per ton of production by 2025, primarily by transitioning to 100% renewable electricity across all our operations, worldwide.  

By the end of 2022, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, the Netherlands and Switzerland had transitioned to renewable electricity, with Poland and Uruguay within touching distance, often powered by solar panels. In total 22% of our operations are already powered by renewables, putting us well on course to meet our 2025 target.

Boosting recycled content

We are by nature a circular economy business, creating long-lasting plastic products from resin, a by-product of petroleum. Beyond we are currently stepping up efforts to create further circular processes using more recycled plastic in our products as an important extra way to cut carbon. We already have products and solutions on the market in Australia, New Zealand and across Europe and the Americas.  

Our target is to use four times more recyclate in our products by 2025 to reach a minimum of 50% of what is allowed under current standards. We work closely with regulators to explore if these standards can be made greener still, and our position as an industry leader gives us a real influence in this debate.  

As use of fossil fuels declines, we are exploring alternative raw materials which we believe could have important long-term potential. For instance, our teams in France are exploring the use of bio-attributed PVC resin and initial results look promising with a complete range of sanitary products already available on the French market.  

Creating new water management solutions

We’re speeding up the development of new fluid management solutions, empowering our businesses around the world and our three innovation hubs in Paris, Toronto and Bengaluru, to work with customers to develop innovative new products to improve access to water and sanitation.  

At the same time, Aliaxis Next, established as a new division in 2022, is investing in and incubating disruptive start-ups and technologies to harness digital and data-driven water management solutions that will be the engines of our future growth.

We have acquired or partnered with 8 early-stage businesses (6 during 2022) working on the cutting edge of water tech to address sustainable water management, access to water, resilient infrastructure, and water for food. With nearly 4 billion people projected to be living in water stressed regions by 2030, this work is clearly critical. 

Raising awareness

Successfully tackling the world’s urgent challenges around water not only requires urgent action but also calls for collaboration between industry, customers, entrepreneurs, policy makers, civil society, and communities.  

We are determined to act as a catalyst for change and have already begun to stimulate debate to raise awareness of water’s central role in tackling climate change.  

Our Action for Water event, staged in Brussels in early January 2023, brought together a host of experts and entrepreneurs (including some from the start-ups in Aliaxis Next’s ecosystem), thought leaders and decision-makers – people who, like us, care deeply about finding answers and who dare to scan the horizon to find them. We fully intend to keep raising awareness on the world’s water challenges, urging business to mobilise to tackle them.