Target 6.2: Adequate sanitation and hygiene for all

By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations

Helpful Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.

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Why shareholder democracy is helpful

Sanitation and hygiene access depends on household toilets, sewers, septic systems and treatment plants financed by governments and families. Over 1.5 billion people lack basic sanitation and 419 million practice open defecation. In 2020, 44 percent of the household wastewater generated worldwide was discharged without safe treatment. Companies touch the outcome as employers, supply-chain buyers, toilet and sanitation-product makers, engineering contractors and lenders. The WASH Pledge shows the scale of the employer lever, with 47 signatories reaching 2.4 million employees at nearly 6,000 sites. Where listed companies run sanitation itself, conduct matters. A House of Lords committee found England's privatized water and sewerage companies paid 18.9 billion pounds in dividends between 2010 and 2021. It found a number were overly focused on financial returns at the expense of operational performance and the environment. If every listed company guaranteed workplace and supply-chain WASH, financed municipal sanitation and lobbied for public sanitation budgets, the gain would be real but bounded. The unserved are mostly rural households and informal-sector workers outside any corporate footprint. Ceres' Valuing Water Finance Initiative asks its 71 benchmarked companies to contribute to universal access, a useful channel. Public infrastructure and household investment deliver the outcome, and owners help at the margin.

How this was scoredHelpful

Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.

We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.

Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.

Sources

1 campaign on record

Ceres at Domino's Pizza Inc☆ Follow2022 · engagement

Recognize water as a financial risk and meet six corporate expectations covering water-quantity management, water-quality protection, ecosystem protection, sanitation access, board oversight, and responsible water-related public policy engagement, by 2030.

With Mercy Investment Services, other institutional investor signatories

Result: not a proxy vote; an ongoing multi-year engagement and annual benchmarking effort

Chipotle and Domino's Pizza are cited by Mercy Investment Services as companies that had already made commitments under the initiative as of 2023; Ceres publishes an annual benchmark tracking company progress.

Valuing Water Finance Initiative, Ceres

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UN Sustainable Development Goals, every item scored for how far it depends on owners voting their values, with the reasoning and the sources behind each rating.

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How this rating was made

Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.

Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.

The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.

How we score dependency, in full.