Water stewardship is one of the top five business concerns among 52 percent of sustainability professionals, according to a survey by Ethical Corporation, while 99 percent believed water will become a priority in the next five to ten years. Water savings can result in significant cost savings for businesses, according to a CNET report.
The survey questioned 96 sustainability professionals about their views on water savings, including professionals at Kraft, Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Shell. According to the report, Whitbread, a U.K. hospitality company, has implemented aerated shower-heads, dual-flush toilets, sensors on urinals and water recycling which has saved the company £350,000 annually, and only costs £173,000 annually. Meanwhile, Impress Metals’ saves £40,503 a year from a surface water project, David Lloyd’s saved £316,225 per year by repairing leaks, auditing bills and trading effluence, and Sainsbury saved £1.6 million annually through its use of sensors on urinals, leakage repair and reduced toilet cistern capacity.
Pepsi recently announced plans to recycle water at its potato chip factory in the U.K. and that it is more than three-fourths of the way to its goal of 20 percent water recycling by 2015, while Graphic Packaging plans to recycle 10 million gallons of water a year with its new water recycling project. Anheuser-Busch InBev reduced water use by 8.5 percent, in 2009, while Campbell Soup and Hormel both reduced water use by 9 percent. Google, meanwhile, is targeting 100 percent water recycling at some of its data centers.
