Water week it has been (sorry).
Warm weather and lack of rain were in the headlines at the beginning of it, as experts proclaimed this summer would be the hottest on record in the UK. By the end of it, the long-awaited rain had come, finally.
Water scarcity has been an ongoing story this summer. The usual stories about hosepipe bans and low-running reservoirs of course, but also the regulator Ofwat being scrapped and the continued spotlight on water companies, as well as the water usage requirements of large businesses, particularly those with growing demands for it.
Which makes it a little surprising that more companies don’t make their water-related sustainability goals more prominent. It’s difficult to argue with how important water is to us and to the planet, and it’s also a fairly safe haven politically.
Many have set goals, particularly to become water-positive, pledging to return more water to communities than they consume, by a future target date.
There are obviously restrictions on how much individual companies can contribute towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number six, to give all people “access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene,” given that water management companies have the most direct responsibility.
Yet putting aside water availability, many sectors play a part in it being safe and accessible. Agriculture is by far the biggest water user but is also a polluter. Energy uses water for plant cooling, while the food and drink sector uses it in production, as does the clothing industry. Many other sectors use water for cleansing materials, reducing heat and washing equipment.
And then there’s the technology sector, in which water is used to cool large data centres. Many companies have set goals to reduce water consumption, which is challenging given the frenetic growth of ‘hyperscale’ cloud computing infrastructure.
In an extensive article on global data centre water usage this week, the head of industry association techUK’s data centre programme was quoted saying that consumption by the sector was not spiralling in line with information processing power because many facilities were not using hybrid or even waterless cooling systems. This follows earlier concerns that data growth for AI purposes could leave the country short of water.
Many large companies, in technology and other fields, have already reported substantial progress towards becoming water-positive.
But as this article points out, understanding the role that water plays across the business value chain and what positive action can be taken is actually extremely complex. Risks may be higher across the supply chain rather than in direct operations, so are ‘unseen’. Harnessing data that tracks water impacts across usage, cleanliness, safety and accessibility is also complicated and requires large data sets. And above all, no company can achieve maximum impact alone, so partnerships are vital.
Water may be all around us and a cornerstone of life, but understanding how to use it better isn’t easy. For sustainability programmes, as this quote in a Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management article put it, ”The challenge is, you talk about carbon, biodiversity, plastic, water, each of these things in individual silos, whereas actually, if you start to look at that through water being the currency of natural capital, your water stewardship strategy should address issues around water, carbon and biodiversity.”
In the future, we may see more companies focused on - and talking about - their total approach to water stewardship, beyond usage reduction initiatives.