A health-care manufacturing factory in Montreal which produces items for brands such as Advil, Buckley’s and Tums is the first in Canada to be certified by a global sustainable water management standard.

The 912,000-square-foot facility, Haleon's only manufacturing site in Canada, achieved the first level of a standard developed by the Scottish non-profit Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) in late 2024 after a months-long certification process.

“It really does speak to our purpose of delivering better everyday health with humanity. We know the health of people (is) inextricably linked to the health of the planet,” Clara Battiston, sustainability lead for Haleon Canada, told Sustainable Biz Canada in an interview.

Headquartered in the U.K., Haleon promotes water stewardship as one of its environmental impact pillars. To meet this goal, it intends to achieve the AWS core standard at all of its owned manufacturing sites by 2025.

Aspiring to be 'stewards and leaders' in water sustainability

Haleon became a member of the AWS in August 2022 because the standard provides a framework for addressing water sustainability and connects the company to a peer network.

The company sees water issues at the forefront with a warming climate — flooding, heavy rain and drought — Battiston said. Being held to the AWS standard helps it understand the role water plays in its ecosystem and community, which “feels really good to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to treat that with care and be stewards and leaders in this space.”

Haleon identified a strong business case for water sustainability, Battiston said.

Water supply risks can have a substantial impact on Haleon’s employees, supply chain and consumers, which means it is in the company’s best interest to identify the potential pitfalls and take mitigation and adaptive measures. Consumers are also expecting producers to examine their environmental impacts and address those gaps, she added.

How Haleon met AWS's benchmark

First, an audit provided background details and data such as water usage in the facility, where Haleon is sourcing its water, risks and opportunities, and the challenges around water management.

Then, a water stewardship plan laid out steps for improving efficiency and circularity. It includes targets for measuring and monitoring actions with a schedule, budgeting and clarifying who will lead the plan.

Haleon moved to implement the strategy through actions like toughening the targets for annual water-use reductions and installing meters at water sources, discharges and major water-user locations.

The company is now moving to monitoring and assessing how it is meeting the targets from its water stewardship plan, Battiston said.

The AWS report says the water efficiency of the site has been assessed, but as the actions are still in progress, “the site has not yet evaluated its performance against the targets in the water stewardship plan, nor has it assessed its contribution to achieving water stewardship outcomes.”

The fifth and final step is communicating and disclosing Haleon’s efforts, such as relaying how the company is addressing its challenges around water use to relevant stakeholders.

Haleon will be subject to an annual evaluation to track its progress. Currently at the baseline core certification, the company can elevate itself to gold and platinum levels if it meets higher levels of performance.

If it is failing to meet the plan, Haleon will work with AWS to maintain compliance, Battiston said.

Haleon's progress on sustainability

Since 2023, 12 of Haleon’s 24 manufacturing sites have achieved the AWS certification, with another seven recommended for certification, according to its 2024 sustainability report. Battiston said the company is “well on track” to meeting the AWS goal.

A similar ambition is achieving water neutrality at its manufacturing sites in water-stressed basins by 2030.

“Right now we are looking (at) achieving our 2025 ambitions. We have an outlook to 2030 and that will continue to iterate as we go forward,” Battiston said.

Other key sustainability targets for Haleon include reducing its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 100 per cent by 2030. Based on a 2020 baseline, the company had cut those emissions by 50 per cent in 2024 with renewable energy procurement, decarbonizing its heat production and elevating its energy efficiency.

For its supply chain emissions, called Scope 3, which represented 92 per cent of Haleon’s carbon emissions in 2024, the company targets a 42 per cent decrease by 2030. The emissions were cut by 10 per cent in 2024 with steps such as right-sizing its packaging, switching to recycled plastic and reducing its reliance on carbon-intensive raw and packaging materials.

To tackle waste, a goal is to develop solutions for all its product packaging to be recycle-ready by 2025, with the ultimate ambition of making all of Haleon’s packaging recyclable or reusable by 2030. In 2024, it reached 74 per cent.

Overall, Haleon’s aspiration is to be net-zero by 2040 from source to sale.