Water Usage

Whether it’s the water we use in our facilities or the water people drink, clean water, and enough of it, is critical to human health. Water scarcity and quality remain important issues in many parts of the world where Johnson & Johnson has operations. Our Statement on Human Right to Water, recognizes that everyone is entitled to sufficient water that is safe and acceptable, physically accessible and affordable.

Goals and Management

In 2005, we set a Healthy Planet 2010 goal to reduce absolute water use by 10 percent by the end of 2010. We achieved a decrease in absolute water use of 9.5 percent to 11.3 million cubic meters. These reductions were achieved through a variety of water management efforts at the local level, including:

• Using treated wastewater for manufacturing, irrigation and toilet flushing;
• Installing water storage tanks, auto-close taps on sinks and piping modifications to reduce water pressure;
• Organizing employee training and lectures on water conservation;
• Conducting rain harvesting; and
• Building zero-discharge wastewater treatment facilities.

We seek to achieve another 10 percent reduction in water use across the company as part of our Healthy Future 2015 goals, using our 2010 consumption as a baseline. And in 2010, we participated in the Carbon Disclosure Project’s first water disclosure effort.

Our Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) Standards establish minimum compliance levels for our facilities, and contain a standard for water and wastewater management which include:

• All wastewaters are treated to safe levels as established by local regulatory bodies, and meet or exceed every local limit required to protect the local watershed;
• Wastewater sources in each facility are inventoried each year and
• Production and research facilities must review, at least annually, their wastewater sources to identify opportunities to decrease wastewater generation or contaminants.

Our EHS standards also set forth clear responsibilities to address water conservation, drinking water supply management, and stormwater management.

Water Conservation and Recycling

Business leaders are provided with tools and best practices in water conservation so they can select the best approaches to reduce water use and costs. Each facility has developed a water conservation plan. Our biggest successes have come from projects to control cooling in energy-efficient ways and site-related process changes and improvements.

In addition, our companies conduct water audits, share best practices and develop ways to increase use of recycled water. Though we are making solid progress to reduce our usage, challenges still exist, including continuing to reduce water use as production increases, and reducing water use in the manufacture of our consumer products, where it is often it is a component. We are working at the local level to encourage investment in water-reuse infrastructure.

In 2008, we began collecting information on the amount of recycled water used within our facilities. In 2010, we used 790,000 cubic meters of recycled water.