Water stewardship is leadership
At whatever point in the natural water cycle an organisation is placed, from supply to downstream use, to treatment or distribution, doing a better job of preserving usable water represents valuable efficiency gains and a healthier bottom line. This is basic, but an important first step.
With climate change inevitably comes water shortages or increased risk of flooding. In this context, businesses that can demonstrate great stewardship practices will also in time become more influential.
Regulation is innovation
Media coverage of climate change is now continuous, the protests larger and longer. And when major cities experience unexpected droughts as in Cape Town in 2018, we should expect public demand for action on climate change is likely to intensify. That means deeper and more stringent regulation. A circular business, particular ones whose practices harness resources once considered waste or pollution and transform them into new productive uses, will benefit from reduced costs of compliance.
Beyond being a good corporate citizen, as a circular economy for water develops, it will likely lead to a recognition of the systemic benefits. For example, in India alone, over 580 million cubic metres of water is used by the textile industry each year. Freeing up this resource by using waterless dyeing will help meet the daily water needs of 32 million people while also reducing the risk of pollution of rivers and lakes, a major issue in India and other developing countries.
The systemic change we need
As the twenty-first century reshapes our thinking about sustainable development in general, the urgency and scale of the issues we face logically leads to demands for system-level change. We already know that individual actions won’t be enough to arrest carbon emissions or ensure countries retain their access to drinking water. Ideas like the circular economy, which at one point seemed almost utopian in their level of ambition, are increasingly being seen as a viable roadmap out of a crisis.
Water is high on the agenda for the decision makers at 2019’s COP25 gathering in Madrid. It’s time to recognise that a circular economy approach to the use of vital natural resources like water, really only means adopting what we already know are the best ideas and the highest standards.