Are You Playing Your Part To Reduce Water Consumption?

Smarter companies will always know better. While other companies are focusing on carbon emissions reduction as an answer to the call for sustainability, the smarter ones are encompassing their sustainability resource planning across all possible areas, including actions to reduce water consumption. This includes water inventory from sources to water footprint, as well as the drafting of water management plan that considers risks.

The greenhouse gas protocol tells us that there are different categories of carbon emissions. It is already well understood that carbon emissions can be produced directly and indirectly either in the upstream or downstream in any production facility. We can refer to this analogy when trying to reduce water consumption, by ensuring that we understand how water can be used in the supply chain and in disposal efforts.

A smart company can take three steps to reduce water consumption, while also protecting its position in the marketplace, assessing risks and embracing sustainability. First of all, an organization would have to assess its water baseline, get accurate inventory of its water resources and identify its water footprint. Secondly, it must fully understand its risk exposure and thirdly it must design and implement a plan.

When composing the water footprint, understand how the resource may be used to make available raw materials or goods which are introduced to the production line by suppliers. This could be in the "work in progress" production phase or during transportation and the company needs to take responsibility for the fact that this happens. While it may well be beyond the borders of the organization, the fact is that the company's demand for the supplier's product is the cause of this water usage.

Fundamentally, in the production stage, water used should be from a renewable source, where at all possible. Water is likely to be as volatile a political subject as carbon emissions in the future. We need to consider how stakeholders and consumers become increasingly aware that water is taken from common resources which could get depleted or contaminated.

Water can become a very critical issue for any industry or business. Questions will govern its efficient use, but it can also be a potentially inflammatory issue after the fact as well. There should be efforts done to recycle water as discharge and runoff from water use can become one of the biggest pollution concerns.

When a company assesses its water related risks, it will likely see an additional urgency to reduce water consumption wherever possible. So many factors can combine to place a premium on water. Local ground conditions, for example, or weather conditions that cause temporary drought. Consider how market conditions could cause energy fluctuations and a corresponding demand for water generated power and so on.

Water related risks can change significantly depending on the geographical location of a company facility. Therefore, for distributed organizations, an assessment of such risks must take in to account regional disparities, local political positions and attitudes.

The corporate approach must be modified to reduce water consumption from a global perspective. Essentially, we have not increased our water efficiency over the last couple of decades, choosing to place most emphasis on energy efficiency and carbon emissions. Sustainability is multifaceted and cannot be polarized.