An inside look at why Liquid I.V. publicly releases their sustainability report
By Mike Keech
My team at Liquid I.V. publicly committed to stepping up our obligation to sustainable business practices by publicly releasing our 2021 sustainability report. It’s the second report we’ve done, but the first we publicly released. Why?
The reason is simple: We can’t responsibly run a company committed to wellness while ignoring the well-being of our planet. Our goal is to keep our environmental impact small through sustainable practices as we grow.
Liquid I.V. has grown fourfold since 2020. Part of what has made us so successful is our give-back work, which is integral to our organization’s purpose.
We consider ourselves a purpose-driven company, and our sustainability commitment is part of that purpose. Liquid I.V.’s teams are collaborating to divert product and packaging waste from landfills while driving down our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Accountability starts with transparency
To shape Liquid I.V.’s first public sustainability report, our team decided to align with the standards outlined by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), an organization that helps brands be transparent and accountable for their impacts by creating a common language for reporting. This enables companies like Liquid I.V. to set specific, measurable, and reasonable goals while helping others put our actions into context.
Why Sustainability?
I was incredibly inspired by the book Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, by Paul Polman, which posits that today’s companies have both an obligation and incentive to make a positive impact.
Liquid I.V. was created as a wellness brand. Since I joined as CEO, we have increased our goals, both profits and how aggressively we pursue our sustainability and give-back efforts. Our first public sustainability report laid the foundation for reaching those goals. I couldn’t be more excited to watch these goals become reality.
How we began our sustainability efforts
Liquid I.V.’s purpose-driven work started when we donated 500 servings of our product to the Los Angeles Mission homeless shelter in 2015. As of November 2022, we’ve donated an astonishing 31 million servings to those in desperate need of rehydration. Product donation is a long-standing pillar of Liquid I.V.’s impact work.
However, during the team’s 2019 impact trip to Nepal, team members were confronted with the startling reality of water pollution, lack of water access, and corporations’ actual impact on our planet. Donating our functional hydration product wasn’t enough, even though its formulation is based off the World Health Organization’s recommended recipe for Oral Hydration Salts, which are needed and used during cataclysmic events.
So, we set out to make an even greater impact, which is why the team began to focus on funding programs that promote clean water access and create a more sustainable business model.
How are we doing?
In our 2021 sustainability report, we benchmarked our current sustainability performance. Here’s some of what we accomplished in 2021:
Every year, we will circle back to these standards, providing updates on our progress. To be better, we must do better.
What comes next
Many of the benchmarks I just mentioned feed into our core sustainability goals, which are:
Mike Keech is the CEO of Liquid I.V.
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