WAVE: Water Stewardship Verified

upcoming webinar: Accelerating Water Stewardship

Is your organization looking to create or update a water stewardship strategy? Learn how WAVE: Water Stewardship Verified can help you assess water use, impact, and risk across your entire enterprise at our free April 22 webinar.

WATER STEWARDSHIP IS AN INCREASING PRIORITY

As businesses across the globe confront increasing water-related challenges impacting their operations and supply chains, company leaders are facing increased pressure from investors, customers and other stakeholders with regard to water-related performance. To meaningfully and credibly address water risk and enhance brand value, companies need to move beyond the “water management” paradigm of arbitrary water-use targets and strategize around the principles of good water stewardship.

Currently, there is a lack of common understanding in the marketplace around what constitutes credible “good corporate water stewardship.” Stakeholders are generally dissatisfied with how existing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and other sustainability reporting frameworks address corporate water stewardship performance. The Water Council, learning from 10+ years of experience working with companies on water stewardship, developed the WAVE program to address this issue.

THE WATER COUNCIL’S WAVE: ACCELERATING CORPORATE WATER STEWARDSHIP

The Water Council’s WAVE program gives companies a way to improve their water stewardship and, importantly, have it independently verified. It is a six-step methodology for improving, reporting and recognizing good corporate water stewardship.

By following the six steps, companies demonstrate that they are strategically prioritizing water-related action where it matters most. This leads to more meaningful water-related goals, targets and outcomes.

INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION: CREDIBLY REPORTING OUTCOMES

The WAVE program concludes with independent verification provided by SCS Global Services. This ultimately ensures that companies can be confident that they are credibly communicating their water stewardship efforts to key stakeholders and the public.

WAVE 1.2

The Water Council is pleased to announce the launch of WAVE: Water Stewardship Verified 1.2. In the spirit of continuous improvement embedded in WAVE, we have again sought feedback on the efficacy of the program from participants, SCS Global Services and other key stakeholders. Building on slight adjustments and revisions for clarity, we are pleased to announce the completion of the updated Normative Document, Implementation Guide and Conformity Matrix. The changes include:

Moving from six steps to five. No actual assessment steps have been removed, but rather the previous Step 1 on the requirement to join The Water Council has been incorporated into the program agreement and fee schedule.
Revised language to reflect feedback from the most recent verification cohort to add clarity to conformity language and requirements.
Revised language and indicators to better account for differences in scale and scope between those organizations with 10 or fewer sites and those with more.
Added in stronger annual Surveillance language during the verification period.
Added a no-obligation consultation after verification is achieved with The Water Council experts to identify possible technology and innovation solutions that could be applied to directly mitigate risks outlined during the WAVE process.

wave participants

These companies are going through the WAVE’s six-step methodology in order to improve their water stewardship performance and reporting.

WAVE Verified

The following companies have been independently WAVE Verified by SCS Global Services, meaning they have assessed water-related risk across the enterprise, identified the highest water-related impacts using credible water-related data and implemented best practice in improving water stewardship performance.