23.03.2021, 15:44
Helping Businesses Manage Their Water
Ecolab has upgraded its Smart Water Navigator tool which offers businesses a cost-free insight into the value of the water used by their operations and supports them in establishing corporate water goals.
The enhanced tool comes at a time when rising industrial water use continues to contribute to the world’s growing water stress and scarcity challenges. According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), the world will experience a 56% freshwater shortfall by 2030 if nothing changes, an increase from the 40 per cent shortfall projected by the U.N. in 2015.
The need for urgency around corporate water action
To better understand the state of corporate water management and how companies can more effectively advance their water management goals, in February 2021 Ecolab and sustainability news research organization GreenBiz surveyed 93 companies with revenues of at least US $1 billion.
The survey underscored the need for increased urgency around water action within organizations, with only 38% of respondents stating that water is a strategic corporate initiative that is proactively managed across their operations. At the same time, S&P Global reports that corporate water use progress is currently insufficient to prevent the projected freshwater gap.
Identifying opportunities to advance corporate water goals
Whilst water targets and goals are typically set by sustainability and corporate responsibility teams, 95 per cent of respondents in the Ecolab-GreenBiz survey said that facility-level teams are responsible for achieving these targets, which may contribute to the disconnect between water intention and action.
- Only 54 per cent of survey respondents currently utilized advanced measurement tools to track progress
- Whilst 45 per cent indicated they felt their organization’s water would be better managed and targets would be more easily achieved if they utilized such tools.
Ecolab President and CEO, Christophe Beck, comments: “This is an important time for industry to start closing the widening gap between freshwater supply and demand through smart water management.
“We developed the Ecolab Smart Water Navigator to help businesses develop comprehensive, context-based plans and to better engage and support the teams responsible for driving smart water management.”
Senior Vice President of Corporate Sustainability, Emilio Tenuta, adds: “Despite a growing understanding of our world’s worsening water crisis, companies are not making water management a priority.
“Tools that help enable facilities to better measure water use are key to driving action, which is why we enhanced the Ecolab Smart Water Navigator.”
Enabling local water action
The enhanced Ecolab Smart Water Navigator supports users who are just beginning to identify baseline water use as well as those who are ready to track year-over-year performance. The tool delivers an automated analysis of water use that allows users to set informed, context-based goals that consider the water basin health in surrounding communities and environments. New features include benchmarking across a portfolio of facilities and the ability to identify water withdrawal targets and risks and evaluate performance over time.
First introduced in 2019, the Smart Water Navigator supports Ecolab’s broader mission to help industry reuse, recycle and reduce water, supporting resilient operations and healthy communities. The company’s water stewardship efforts focus on identifying and supporting equitable and sustainable water use, and partnerships, like its founding membership in the Water Resilience Coalition, an industry-driven initiative, of the United Nations Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate.
Visit smartwaternavigator.com for additional information on the tool.
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