Water use

Water challenges are local. Water availability, quality, governance, and flooding differ between river basins. A river basin, or catchment, is the area of land where water drains into the same river, lake or other water body. Because water-related risks are shared by many users in the same area, our work needs to consider both supplier sites and the wider local water context.

Our water-related work covers several connected areas: water quality, water stewardship, flooding and water recycling. What can be done differs by supplier site, local water conditions, available infrastructure and partner involvement.

We assess these risks using tools such as World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) Water Risk Filter. These assessments are used to identify higher-risk areas and inform supplier engagement and site-level planning.

Our approach starts with assessing water-related risks in our value chain, including our own operations and upstream operations. This includes looking at local water conditions around supplier sites. The results help us identify which supplier sites may need water-related planning, such as water roadmaps or stewardship plans, and where actions may be relevant, such as improving production efficiency, increasing water recycling and better understanding water-related dependencies.

Water-intensive production processes such as dyeing, washing and finishing take place in wet-processing units in our supply chain. In our Annual and sustainability report, we report freshwater use, reuse and recycling for these units, where data is available.

In 2025, freshwater use in these units decreased by 22.8 percent compared with 2022. Compared with 2024, freshwater usage decreased by 11 percent. According to our reporting, this decrease was associated with lower total material weight for products, water-efficiency measures, and recycling and reuse of water.

The share of recycled water used in these production units reached 20.3 percent in 2025, compared with 18.4 percent in 2024 and 11.3 percent in 2022. See our Annual and sustainability report for more information.

Wastewater discharge from wet-processing can affect water quality, which makes wastewater management important. We work with suppliers on wastewater management, including through Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC), where relevant. ZDHC, the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals Foundation, is a global multi-stakeholder organisation that supports brands, suppliers and chemical companies in working to eliminate hazardous chemicals from value chains and in advancing chemical management through industry-wide standards, tools and capacity-building programmes.

Water stewardship means looking at water use at supplier-site level together with local water conditions and other water users, such as communities, farms, businesses and ecosystems that depend on the same water sources.

Prioritised supplier sites are selected based on water-related risk and relevance, including local water conditions, production processes and where we can work with suppliers to support improvements. These sites have used a stewardship self-assessment developed by H&M with support from Quantis, a global environmental sustainability consulting firm. This tool helps suppliers set improvement plans alongside their water roadmaps. The plans outline water-related impacts, dependencies, risks and relevant actions based on the local context.

Water risk is not only about scarcity. In some locations, flooding and extreme rainfall can create risks for supplier sites and surrounding areas. Through our WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) partnership, we are exploring local flood assessment tools to understand whether they could support local decision-making on flood-related risk mitigation.

Water recycling is one approach used in many wet-processing units, depending on site conditions and technology.

Alongside a consortium of brands, suppliers and technical partners, we implemented a water recycling project at Fakir Knitwears Ltd., a supplier in Bangladesh, through the Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution Programme (SMEP), focused on water recycling in a region where significant amounts of freshwater are taken from local sources, including groundwater. SMEP aims to address the environmental and human health impacts of the manufacturing sector in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and some of the most pressing challenges associated with plastic pollution.

Water use also connects to materials. Some raw materials, including cotton, can be water-intensive, depending on where and how they are grown. Using recycled materials can reduce reliance on some virgin raw material production, while cotton sourcing programmes can support farming practices aimed at using water more efficiently. Read more about how we choose materials.

Water use in our own operations, including distribution centres, stores and offices, is mainly linked to plumbing, heating, cooling and other systems needed to operate and maintain the buildings. Wastewater from these operations is handled through local systems in line with applicable requirements.

Water risks are often shared across a river basin or catchment. Collaboration is therefore an important part of our work. We have worked with WWF for over a decade on water. The partnership has informed our approach to water stewardship, including water risk assessment, supplier guidance and basin-level analysis.

We also support industry collaboration on water, including through Corporate Water Leaders, an initiative focused on sector-wide engagement on water-related challenges. As part of this work, participating companies have developed a Common Water Framework and are supporting its consultation and implementation.