EN8: Total water withdrawal by source
At our Honduras textile plant, Anvil’s most water-intensive facility, the principal source of water is ground water. While we draw the water directly from a well, we understand it may ultimately originate in the nearby Chamelecon River. In terms of volume, however, the withdrawal for the needs of the industrial park where our textile plant is located is estimated to be less than one percent of the river’s annual volume, and therefore does not represent a significant impact.
Anvil has various efforts in place to reduce overall water usage. For example, at Spectratex, our North Carolina dye facility, we reduced the amount of water used per pound of fabric by 2.2 gallons compared to 2009 by introducing better fabric prepping techniques and by improving pre-treatment chemicals, which reduced the need for corrections that require more water. This allowed us to save 3.35 million gallons of water in 2010.
In addition, our plant engineers are constantly finding ways to reduce the amount of water needed to manufacture fabric. In 2010, our Honduras textile plant reduced actual water consumption by 2% for Gal/Flb versus the prior year, even though the dye-to-bleach ratio increased by 39% and dyeing uses as much as four times the Gal/Flb as bleaching. Our estimates show that, when taking into consideration dye/bleach ratios, we used 10% less water than we would have without the improvements that were made. The 10% is roughly equivalent to avoiding the use of 60,000,000 gallons of water for the year. If we look closer at this saving, it is equivalent to saving 176,471 gallons of water per day at our textile facility (based on a typical production year).
As shown in the below chart, the source distribution of water remains similar, with a 34% increase in ground water usage, and 42% increase in municipal water supply usage, both driven by higher production rates in 2010.
The below numbers include all sources of water withdrawal for all Anvil owned operations but do not reflect water usage at our New York City corporate offices, which we believe to be an insignificant amount.
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For information about total water discharge by quality and destination, please see our answer to EN21 under the Emissions, Effluents and Waste Aspect of this Section.
As a large purchaser of cotton, we are also interested in the water footprint of the cotton we purchase. Read below about our first water footprint assessment.
EN9: Water sources significantly affected by withdrawal of water
According to GRI, a body of water is significantly impacted if more than 5 percent of its annual volume is withdrawn. The withdrawal of water for the industrial park where our textile plant—the most water intensive of our operations— is estimated to be less than one percent of the adjacent river’s annual volume (based upon information provided by the industrial park where our textile plant is located). Therefore, it does not represent a significant impact. We will continue to monitor the situation as our production grows.
Anvil Water Footprint Results
We recently worked with PE International to conduct an in-house water footprint of our basic Anvil(r) Style 979 t-shirt (dyed vs. bleached), manufactured at our textile plant and two cut and sew plant locations in 2009 and 2010. Based on the results, we learned that agriculture dominates water consumption and that most of the water used at Anvil locations is not actually ‘consumed’ since it is returned to the same watershed.
Anvil Water Footprint (2009 & 2010 for Textile & Cut & Sew Operations)
Furthermore, water consumption during textile processing has a very small effect on water deprivation because we manufacture in the water abundant areas of Honduras and Nicaragua. While we confirmed that the water use in a bleached t-shirt is lower than a dyed t-shirt, that difference is negligible compared to the agricultural impact of cotton.
Product Life Cycle Water Footprint of Water Consumption For Dyed Vs. Bleached T-shirt
While the Water Footprint reveals that water use per shirt declined in 2010 as compared to 2009, if we take into account water consumption (i.e. the upstream water use in energy production), the net result is that water consumption rose in 2010 compared to 2009. Overall, however, applying a water deprivation factor which is low due to the fact that our textile and cut and sew operations are in water rich regions, the water consumption rate rose in 2010 compared to 2009.
We also evaluated the effects of changing the region of US Cotton cultivation. The region where we source our cotton has the greatest impact on our product life cycle water footprint.
We are now in the process of developing a fiber sourcing strategy using the information we learned from this report and integrating it into our overall product life cycle metrics.
EN10: Percentage and total volume of water recycled and reused
In 2010, we continued to focus on finding more ways to use recycled and reused water as shown in the below chart.
For example, at Spectratex, our North Carolina dye facility, we reduced the amount of water used per pound of fabric by 2.2 gallons compared to 2009 by introducing better fabric prepping techniques and by improving pre-treatment chemicals, which reduced the need for corrections that require more water. This allowed us to save 3.35 million gallons of water in 2010.
At our Honduras textile plant, we eliminated certain water-intensive steps in the dye process and implemented a process by which the water used to cool fabric after it was dyed is recycled and used in another step in the manufacturing process. This allowed us to save 60 million gallons of water, and drove down our per pound of fabric water use by 10%.
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