Reduce water use in operations

- With significant drought affecting numerous parts of the world, catastrophic rain events becoming more common in other regions, and many global waterways impacted by serious pollution or unsustainable extraction, water has emerged as a key strategic issue for businesses large and small. The Middle East, North Africa, and the Western U.S. among other areas, have long been familiar with water shortages. Increasingly, shortages are occurring even in places that have access to relatively large amounts of water. Iconic rivers like the Ganges in India and the Mississippi River in the USA, are impacted by drought, pollution, and overuse. Companies around the world are hearing from their business customers, investors, and government agencies about the growing importance of water issues, and what are they doing about it? Well, numerous companies are finding ways to increase revenues by creating products that use less water or that reduce customers' water dependency. Over the past decade, many businesses have enhanced their own bottom line by improving the efficiency of water use and reducing the discharge of water. How do you get started in improving your company's water use? You begin by asking several key questions and tracking the factors that most apply to your own business. Do you have a strategic plan that recognizes water as a key business issue and manages it accordingly? What's the annual water use of your major offices or operations? And include production, cleaning, maintenance, and grounds keeping in your water inventory. This should be relatively easy to obtain from utility records or by installing onsite metering. If you rent or lease, ask the owner for records and metering information. Would an investor consider water of material value to your company? If so, are you managing and disclosing your water use to shareholders? You'd be surprised at the companies where water is a serious issue like in the technology sector. All those data centers rely on huge amounts of water for cooling purposes, and major companies like Microsoft and many others have launched initiatives to improve their water sustainability efforts. By beginning to ask these basic questions, companies have begun to manage water as an issue of real, strategic, and material importance. For many companies, the initiative to manage water as a key business issue is driven by crisis. They're driven to action because of risks ranging from water shortages, contamination, changing public perceptions of corporate water use, and questions from investors. The lesson is to be proactive, not reactive. Understand your issues before you're forced to confront them.