At Carter’s, we believe in contributing to a better future for the next generation. We also recognize the emerging risks that climate change can pose for people and businesses everywhere. To do our part in leaving behind a world where our children can thrive, we and our industry must continue to reduce the environmental impacts of our products and operations.
Over the years we have launched a number of initiatives intended to reduce our overall environmental impact while also improving operational efficiency. Through this strategy, we have made significant progress in reducing the energy we consume, the emissions we generate, and the waste we send to landfills. While we are proud of the progress we have made, we continue to search for new opportunities to lessen our impacts, and we look forward to sharing our progress in this area over time.
Understanding
Our Water Impacts
As part of our 2019 environmental data inventory, we quantified our Company-wide water usage for the first time. We plan to address both the direct and indirect impact that we have and plan to seek ways to reduce our water usage over time, including with our vendors.
| Water Use (million gallons) | 2018 |
|---|---|
| Total water use (direct and indirect) | 797.62 |
| Direct operations1 | 30.12 |
| Indirect Operations2 | 767.49 |
| Distribution centers3 | 10.02 |
| Corporate4 | 0.43 |
| Retail Stores | 19.67 |
| Water intensity – direct only (per million $ revenue) | 0.01 |
| Water intensity – direct and indirect (per million $ revenue) | 0.23 |
- "Direct" refers to Carter's owned operations (e.g., distribution centers, retail stores, corporate offices).
- "Indirect" refers to the operations of Carter's vendors. Eighty-two percent of vendor facilities provided water consumption data and production data. These numbers are used to scale up to Carter's total production.
- At this time, data from Canada and Mexico DC is not available.
- Only US Corporate Offices.