SUPPLY CHAIN -
Over 35,600 people have signed a Courage Campaign pledge to boycott several popular California produce companies after news that they may be using contaminated oil industry wastewater to grow their crops.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Eighteen-year-old Perry Alagappan of Texas has created a renewable heavy metal filter capable of removing 99 percent of heavy metals from water that passes through it, The Guardian reports.This could be particularly useful in countries such as China and India, where recycling factories are recovering e-waste exported from around the world, but discharging heavy metals and chemicals into local water supplies in the process.
COLLABORATION -
A remote village in Kenya could have access to 15 million gallons of clean water by the end of the year — funded by Unilever shampoo, deodorant and body wash sales at Walgreens.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
As World Water Week draws to a close in Stockholm, Sweden, issues of gender equality have been brought into sharp focus with a growing acknowledgement among business leaders that the global water burden still falls overwhelmingly on women.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Coca-Cola announced today it is on track to meet its 2020 water replenishment goal five years ahead of schedule. The company expects it will safely replenish 100 percent of the water it uses in beverages and production through community water projects by the end of 2015, fulfilling its aspirational commitment set in 2007. If it succeeds, it will be the first food and beverage company to replenish all the water it uses.
NEW METRICS -
Just in time for World Water Week, the Water Risk Monetizer, industry’s first publicly available financial modeling tool that enables businesses to factor current and future water risks into decision making, now provides users with insights into how water scarcity impacts revenue. The tool’s new assessment helps water-dependent businesses better understand the full value of water to their operations and identify revenue at risk based on current and projected water scarcity.
WASTE NOT -
AT&T announced a new program today that will help California customers minimize a major source of water waste: leaks.Customers that sign up for AT&T Digital Life and add a Water Detection Package will receive alerts on their mobile devices when a sensor detects the presence of water in a designated area in their home. In addition, the AT&T Digital Life Water Control service not only detects water leaks, but allows users to shut off the water source remotely from their mobile phone or tablet.
WASTE NOT -
Molson Coors Brewing Company today released its 2015 Corporate Responsibility Report, covering the company’s 2014 performance toward its 2020 goals.The brewer reports meaningful progress in 2014 toward its 2020 targets of zero waste to landfill, 25 percent energy reduction and 15 percent reduction in both carbon and water intensity. Results included:
WASTE NOT -
If you’re concerned about the recent drought but feel lost on how you can lessen your personal water use, a new initiative promises to help. Anheuser Busch’s Shock Top Brewing Co. is partnering with Indiegogo to identify, fund and distribute water-saving innovations that can help California residents reduce their water consumption.
COLLABORATION -
The University of Minnesota has received a $12 million dollar award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to bring together a network of scientists, industry leaders and policy partners committed to building better cities of the future, according to a recent announcement.The network will connect across nine research universities, major metropolitan cities in the U.S. and India, as well as infrastructure firms and policy groups. The project includes 25 faculty members across the nine universities, and will involve more than 40 graduate students conducting research in cross-university interdisciplinary teams.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Even as many U.S. communities struggle to support growing populations with limited water resources, few are utilizing water connection charges to increase water-savvy residential development projects in their communities, according to a new report by Western Resource Advocates, Ceres and the University of North Carolina's Environmental Finance Center.
CLEANTECH -
In a creative attempt to protect California’s waning water supply, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti yesterday announced the release of 20,000 “shade balls” into the LA Reservoir. The deployment marks the final phase of a program to safeguard the 175-acre, 3.3 billion gallon reservoir by releasing 96 million of the balls onto its surface.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Until we achieve widespread optimization of industrial materials use (quite a few years off, yet), recycling is still our best option for retaining value and extending the life of those materials.Not one of the better examples of this, modern milk cartons have six layers of different materials (75 percent cardboard, 20 percent aluminium, and 5 percent plastic) that must be separated, with different recycling methods for each — a resource-intensive process that essentially eliminates the benefits of recycling.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Agriculture consumes close to 70 percent of water demand, but a significant 10 percent goes to domestic applications, such as maintaining lawns and other landscaping.Arguably, the best and most sustainable course of action is to let your lawn die and plant indigenous landscapes but, realistically, not everyone is going to do that. The next-best thing, however, would be to find a way to maintain non-native landscaping using as little water as possible.A company called Blue Marble hopes to help people do just that by leveraging Internet of Things technology to conserve water during domestic irrigation.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Kodak today opened a new manufacturing line at its Columbus, Georgia facility that will produce its KODAK SONORA Process Free Plates. Kodak says SONORA Process Free Plates deliver the productivity, quality and print capabilities of mainstream processed plates while eliminating the water, chemical and energy use required by processed plates, without sacrificing quality or productivity..
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Knowing how conventional cotton is grown and denim is made, always-a-better-way outdoor apparel brand Patagonia has set out to change the industry. The company has partnered with chemical company Archroma on a new denim collection, launched this week — which is Fair Trade certified and said to use 84 percent less water, 30 percent less energy and 25 percent less CO2 compared to conventional denim dyeing processes — as well as a campaign telling us all about it.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
Earlier this year, the Des Moines Water Works announced plans to sue three Iowa counties over high concentrations of nitrates from agricultural runoff. At the same time, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation issued its biennial report on the state of the Chesapeake, giving it a D+ and highlighting phosphorus runoff from agriculture operations. And then there was the city of Toledo shutting down the water supply in the summer of 2014 due to a harmful algal bloom that may have been caused, in part, by runoff from over-fertilized fields.You’d be forgiven for thinking that water quality impacts of the food and ag supply chain are on consumers’ radars.But they’re not.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
For many of us, our high school science fair likely involved creative experimentation that may have yielded one more baking soda and vinegar volcano. Not so for 16-year-old Maria Elena Grimmett, a student at the Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, Fla., who is already an accomplished scientist tackling serious water quality issues that threaten the health of rivers, streams and groundwater.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
In Parts I and II of this Series, we gave evidence to support the unlikely hypothesis of an emerging conscience amongst some mainstream companies.
NEW METRICS -
The Carbon Trust announced Monday it is piloting a new Water Footprint label and certification scheme. It is now inviting businesses to certify their water use assessments with the scheme, using the Water Footprint Network’s methodology or the ISO water footprint standard.