More Corporations Seek To Become "Water Positive"
With governments and corporations around the world increasingly seeking to become carbon neutral to combat ongoing climate change, a trend in how we think about source water consumption is emerging as well.
The term “net zero” is a popular way to describe the goal of emitting only as much greenhouse gas as one eliminates by planting trees, capturing carbon, or purchasing carbon offsets. But more groups are now considering how they utilize water sources in the corporate pledges they make to better protect our planet.
“Often called ‘water positive,’ it centers on making water-intensive processes more efficient and putting more water back into geographic areas where a company operates than it takes out, something that is becoming more of a focus as water crises like shortages, overuse, and droughts impact areas across the globe, including the western United States,” according to CNBC. “This has led companies from BP to Facebook to Gap to all make pledges to replenish more water than used in their direct operations in the coming years.”
Corporations can take a variety of measures to achieve water positivity. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are building wastewater treatment plants at some of their offices to reuse their wastewater for watering plants and flushing toilets. PepsiCo, another company seeking to become water positive, is working to conserve source water in a variety of ways.
“After water is run through the lines and tanks to switch Pepsi to Mountain Dew at one Mexico City bottler, it is treated to drinking-safe standards, then trucked nine miles to the company’s factory in the Vallejo Industrial Zone, where it’s used to wash potatoes to make Sabritas chips,” The Guardian reported. “The project has cut freshwater demand at the Sabritas plant in half.”
With more companies leading the way in “water positivity,” it seems that the importance of such measures is reaching more people than ever. But battling such a pervasive problem as source water scarcity will take ongoing corporate effort, as well as commitments from consumers, governments, and more industries that rely on this precious resource.
“To truly keep from draining the planet’s limited supply of fresh water, companies need to look beyond their own operations, to their supply chains,” per The Guardian. “That’s particularly important for industries that are historically large polluters and rely heavily on natural resources, such as agriculture, food and beverage, fashion, semiconductors and mining.”
To read more about how water systems around the country deal with drought conditions, visit Water Online’s Source Water Scarcity Solutions Center.