Water is a precious natural resource, with water scarcity impacting over 2 billion people worldwide, and 1.1. billion people lacking access to freshwater. As a large retailer that uses a significant amount of water in producing our products, we accept our responsibility to minimise our water impacts.
Most of Kmart’s water usage is in the production of clothing, towel and bedding products, with the largest proportion in raw materials – in particular cotton – and the wet processing facilities used in production, such as fabric mills and dyeing facilities.
In 2017, Kmart joined the Better Cotton as one aspect of our response to water scarcity. Better Cotton seeks to encourage cotton farmers to work on continuous improvement in water efficiency and management.
We also joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and aim to use the HIGG Index facilities management tool to capture total water usage data for top 100 wet processing facilities by order volume for clothing, towel and bedding products by July 2023. This data will be used to inform long-term Kmart setting and to develop water efficiency improvement plans in partnership with our suppliers, such as investments in water-saving technologies and processes.
In 2022, we commissioned a water footprint assessment of our clothing supply chain to further understand our water impacts and risks as first step in developing a comprehensive long-term strategy.
Drawing on our water footprint assessment, the table below summarises Kmart’s estimated Blue Water*consumption in the 2021 calendar year past year at different level of our clothing supply chain.
Apparel Supply Chain Stage
Blue Water Footprint (m3)
Raw Material Extraction
118,905,621
Raw Material Processing
13,598,795
Fabric Production
Finished Product Assembly
4,329,764
Grand Total Blue Water Footprint
163,382,776
In addition, Kmart Group has continued implementation against our existing 2023 target. To-date, more than 90 per cent of our top 100 wet processing facilities have been confirmed as implementing a water efficiency plan. Among them, more than 54 percent of facilities water efficiency plans are onsite verified by the third-party.
*Blue Water is the volume of surface or groundwater evaporated, incorporated into products, or returned to other catchments or the sea
*Top 100 wet processing facilities by order volume are our top 100 high order volume facilities that account for more than 85% of total order volume for our own brand clothing, towel and bedding products in the past 12 months.
*Water efficiency improvement plans include, for example, baseline data on water usage, targets for reduction, and evidence of initiatives to optimise water usage.