Water

We have focused on reducing our water impacts since 2000 when we first began setting year-over-year reduction targets. Since then, we have moved beyond merely reducing the water footprint of our own facilities to working more holistically outside our corporate walls, addressing water concerns in our supply chain and our broader communities.

Our Water Strategy

We believe that business has a key role to play in finding sustainable solutions to current and future global water challenges. As an industry leader with more than 180,000 employees worldwide and manufacturing facilities or distribution channels across six continents, our reach enables large-scale positive impact.

Our Goals and Performance Progress

Goal: Cut the amount of water used to make each vehicle by 30% globally by 2015, compared to 2009.

We achieved our water reduction goal two years ahead of schedule. We will be updating our global manufacturing water strategy in 2014 and setting a new long-term target.

In 2014, we published our corporate water strategy, which builds upon our 2011 water strategy for our manufacturing operations.

Ford’s water strategy aligns with the core elements of the CEO Water Mandate, which we endorsed in 2014.

Between 2000 and 2013, we reduced our total global water use by 61%, or more than 10 billion gallons.

Beginning in 2014, we will start asking our major suppliers – those we consider to be Tier 1 – to voluntarily report on their water use through CDP Water.

See more at Ford’s Goals, Commitments and Status: Water

A basic human right

We see water as far more than an environmental concern. Since 2012, Ford has recognized a basic human right to clean, affordable drinking water and adequate and accessible sanitation and, through our water strategy, seeks to uphold and respect that right.

Case Study: Saving Water in Cuautitlán, Mexico

Our manufacturing facility in Cuautitlán, Mexico, is located in a region of water scarcity. Over the years, facility managers have come up with some creative solutions to their natural environmental challenges, reducing water use per vehicle produced at this plant by almost 58% between 2000 and 2013.

Voice: Brooke Barton

Director, Ceres Water Program

“A business with a 21^st century mindset views water as part of an interconnected ecosystem that is impacted by a host of variables, including changes in our climate. Water is understood to be a shared good that doesn’t just magically flow out of a pipe; it has a whole natural and engineered infrastructure supporting it.”

Water Use

Although the making of vehicles is not especially water intensive, we use water in many key manufacturing processes in our plants, including vehicle painting, and water is used at every point in our supply chain.

Sustainable Solutions

In 2014, we are marking the 10^th anniversary of the rebuilt Dearborn Truck Plant at the Ford Rouge Center, which was hailed as a model of sustainable manufacturing when we rebuilt it in 2004. The facility incorporates extensive natural storm water management systems and a green roof that was the largest in the world when it was installed.

Read more about our investments in new technologies