WATER EFFICIENCY


asking, Mark, is: have I got my risks down to a manageable level? Can I accept that level of risk from where you are now? And can I save any more money? Is there a business case for doing more? It may be that you have got where you ought to be.


Martin Seal: I think you have to look at some of this over a lot longer term than five years, asking what the world will look like in 2030? You have a growing population, demand for energy and food. If you start to do longer-term thinking, and ask yourself what your business is going to look like in 30 years’ time, say, all of a sudden that will start to inform the decisions you are making. Here and now, we are trying to hit quarterly targets, yearly targets. Unless you show that longer-term risk on the total supply chain, you are probably not going to get the engagement within the senior management team that you want either.


Chris Twells: Although we may have good intentions, let’s ask ourselves, ‘how many water projects would meet corporate hurdles, for example, return on capital employed’. So, where is water placed in the board, and is it seen as a business critical issue?


Mark Lovett: Does the investment have to hang together as a decent return? Or do you stretch it a bit for reputation?


Alison Shenton: We would still have the return on capital argument to develop but, because sustainability is such an issue for cement, it helps to bring it through.


Jens Eiken: Coming back to Chris’s point about water being in the boardroom or not – it depends on which business you are in and how important this ingredient really is. Water is the main ingredient in our product,


not merely a utility; therefore there is significant risk and urgency to address these issues within our business and treat water with utmost respect.


Simon Parsons: David, have you managed to get senior management buy-in for water?


David Ion: To a limited extent. The thought process behind making a ten- or 15-year project commitment is still some way off. We have a lot of other competing projects, certainly on the environmental side.


Simon Parsons: What’s the view from Defra?


Peter Jiggins: We have been working hard in the last five years to push water efficiency up the agenda in the way water companies look at


things, certainly in the balance between their supply and demand. They have just finished their resource management plans, looking 25 years ahead. Some of the indications from that show that non-domestic water use is pretty flat and in some cases decreasing, mainly due to changes in water use rather than assumptions about water being used more efficiently.


Vi Gururajan: Looking ahead, I think there is going to be water labelling. It has started happening and it is going to cause more confusion both to businesses and the consumers. I have already started hearing the word ‘ecological footprinting’ being targeted too.


Martin Seal: Water footprinting is flawed. Water is about how much you are using, where you are using it, what the physical impact is on the watershed, what time of year you are using it. We need to be strong as businesses to say, ‘It’s not about putting a label on a brand’.


“Water is the main ingredient in our product, not merely a utility; therefore there is a significant risk and urgency to address these issues”


Vi Gururajani: This is where academics should work closely with government agencies to steer the agenda, rather than sit and wait to see what businesses do – and then probably pick at them and say it’s no good.


Martin Seal: What we haven’t done is find a way of joining together; we are probably wasting a lot of time and energy individually trying to find a solution. Again, if we had a government agency who was able to pull that together – otherwise it is completely reliant upon us as businesses to talk to one another.


Paul Martin: There might be joint ventures we could do with the water supply in other


38 Water & Wastewater Treatment September 2010


industries to say, ‘Let’s build a plant that deals with recycling to the required level for the number of people that are using it’. That might be the best commercial way forward. We have one of the world’s biggest greenhouses at the back of our Teesside factory which, with collaboration and the right treatment, there could be some work that could be done that someone’s waste, as you say, is someone else’s treasure.


Simon Parsons: What’s likely to be the tipping point for water efficiency


David Ion: It would be like an oil crisis. It would be one really bad year’s drought, where you just cannot get the supply of a large number of ingredients.


Chris Twells: The trouble is, the lessons we learn are the ones that hurt us the most. Can we really afford to wait for a disaster to happen before planning a response?


Vi Gururajan: There is plenty of water around. Yes, you can be more efficient, you can reduce consumption and waste. But it only goes to a certain level, beyond which you start thinking about there being water everywhere – and how we can start using it more innovatively.


Debate Round-up Population growth, dietary change, urbanisation, climate change and water pollution – all of these factors are creating a growing water scarcity crisis, particularly in the developing world. By 2030, demand projections indicate that overall water demand will increase by 40% on what it was in 2005. As this latest Round Table Debate showed,


there are companies focused on reducing water consumption. Clearly, some are thinking only in financial terms; what it costs to abstract it and clean it up after use. But with a lack of clear and consistent advice


for business on water strategies, few companies are looking at the physical, regulatory and reputational risks associated with the future use of water. ■■■


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