Kering and Tiffany & Co. are leading bold water conservation efforts while reckoning with the industry’s outsized role in global water pollution.
The luxury industry’s environmental reckoning has entered its most essential phase yet: water. Once overlooked in favor of carbon offsets and recycled materials, water is now commanding the sector’s full attention — not just because of optics, but because water scarcity, pollution, and ecosystem collapse have become impossible to ignore.
Kering, the French luxury conglomerate behind Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta, has unveiled what may be the most ambitious water stewardship strategy to date. Its newly announced Water-Positive Strategy aims not only to reduce water use but to actively replenish and regenerate the ecosystems its brands depend on. At the heart of Kering’s approach is the acknowledgment that climate change, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity are not separate crises. Instead, the group sees these issues as part of a deeply interwoven Climate-Nature-Water nexus.
“The need for responsible corporate water stewardship to stay within the planetary boundaries has never been more urgent,” Marie-Claire Daveu, Kering’s chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer, said in a statement on the Kering website. “It is crucial that water commitments evolve from a reductions-only approach to become water-positive, regenerating and replenishing water and ecosystems associated with all business activities.”
To deliver on that commitment, Kering will focus on ten critical water basins closely tied to its operations, from sourcing regions to manufacturing zones. The first Water Resilience Lab is set to open in Tuscany’s Arno Basin in autumn 2025 — a site chosen for its concentration of luxury tannery operations, not just for Kering, but for competitors and adjacent sectors. The labs, which will roll out across all ten regions by 2035, are designed as epicenters for community and industry collaboration, including local authorities, indigenous communities, and fellow luxury players. The goal is not just to reduce harm, but to leave these water systems healthier than before.
Internally, Kering has committed to shifting toward water-positive raw materials, including regenerated textiles and regenerative agriculture-based inputs, while implementing innovations like chrome-free tanning across its supply chains. These changes come as part of its broader science-based target for freshwater impact.
Elsewhere in luxury, jewelry house Tiffany & Co. is bringing attention to aquatic ecosystems with a focus on the coast. Its new initiative, Love For Our Oceans, marks a major milestone in the brand’s conservation work, spotlighting mangrove forests in China through a partnership with the Mangrove Conservation Foundation. The project pairs education and restoration efforts with sales of T Smile by Tiffany cord bracelets, made from ocean-bound plastic bottles. The initiative, launched in China’s coastal regions, aims to amplify awareness around mangroves’ role as natural carbon sinks and wave buffers.
“As a global luxury jeweler, we are deeply committed to protecting the planet,” said Anthony Ledru, president and chief executive officer of Tiffany & Co. “It is more than our responsibility; it is a long-term commitment that started nearly 25 years ago.”
That long-term vision has already channeled more than $40 million in ocean conservation grants through the Tiffany & Co. Foundation, which supports work in over 30 countries. With this latest campaign, the company strengthens its alignment with the UN Biodiversity goal of safeguarding 30 percent of global oceans by 2030.
Prada, too, is reorienting its environmental strategy toward water through its Re-Nylon program, a multi-year sustainability initiative that recently added a high-profile campaign featuring Emma Watson and Benedict Cumberbatch. Beyond the celebrity-driven visuals, the campaign promotes the brand’s partnership with UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. Through their collaborative SEA BEYOND education platform, Prada and UNESCO have helped teach more than 35,000 students worldwide about ocean conservation and sustainability science.
The campaign centers on Prada’s Re-Nylon collection, made from ECONYL — a regenerated nylon sourced from landfill waste and ocean plastics. Since July 2023, one percent of Re-Nylon sales has gone to support SEA BEYOND, linking product purchases directly with ocean education. For Prada, the message is clear: sustainability must become as desirable as the clothes themselves.
The urgency behind these efforts is not theoretical. Fashion’s role in the water crisis is well-documented. According to the United Nations, the industry is responsible for ten percent of global carbon emissions — more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. Its water footprint is equally dire: fashion consumes 93 billion cubic meters of water each year, enough to meet the needs of five million people.
More troubling, water is not just being consumed — it is being poisoned. The European Union estimates that 20 percent of all industrial water pollution comes from textile dyeing and treatment. In countries like Bangladesh and India, factories routinely release untreated, chemically saturated wastewater into rivers. In the Buriganga River outside Dhaka, dissolved oxygen levels have dropped to near zero in some regions, transforming what was once a source of food and drinking water into a biological dead zone.
Fashion is polluting our waters and threatening life below the surface, Dianne Plummer, the Lead Consultant of STEM Spark Solutions, wrote in Forbes. She points to synthetic fibers like polyester and acrylic as among the worst offenders. Not only do these textiles shed microplastics during washing — contributing to the estimated 35 percent of oceanic microplastics that originate from clothing — they also resist biodegradation, adding to the growing crisis of plastic pollution in marine ecosystems.
The Journal of Hazardous Materials recently published findings showing that plastic production now exceeds 430 million tons per year, with eleven million tons ending up in oceans annually. These microfibers are now detectable in every ocean basin and along coastal shorelines across the world, entering the food chain through fish and shellfish and raising concerns for human health.
Despite this mounting evidence, fashion remains largely unregulated in global climate and water policy. That is slowly beginning to change as luxury players begin taking voluntary steps toward accountability. In 2023, the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, convened by the United Nations, urged brands to make stronger environmental commitments — but few have outlined as comprehensive a water plan as Kering’s.
The shift underway is not without its contradictions. Luxury brands, by nature, trade on exclusivity, opulence, and aspirational desire. But water is the opposite of exclusive. In aligning their values with water equity, these companies are being forced to reevaluate what luxury really means. For Kering, at least, the goal of its Water-Positive Strategy is to be transformative, and, says Daveu, the company will collaborate with local stakeholders to deliver measurable water-positive outcomes to enhance social, environmental and economic resilience, and “ultimately contribute to building up the availability of clean water for all.”
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