A New Collaboration to Assess the Private Sector’s Impact on Water Quality
Future H2O-B is helping build a tool to measure wastewater impacts from the global to the facility level
Each year 1.2 trillion gallons of industrial waste, sewage, and stormwater are dumped, untreated, into U.S. waters — and a meaningful percentage comes from corporations. CEOs have taken notice and are making moves to address industrial wastewater pollution as a fundamental threat to business sustainability and the health of communities and our planet. What these leaders need now: better tools to understand their wastewater impacts on scales ranging from the global to the facility.
Now Future H2O-B, in partnership with the The Earth Genome and the Catalan Institute for Water Research (the project lead), has the opportunity to change that. This month we were awarded a contract from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) to create a first-of-its-kind assessment tool — the Wastewater Impact Assessment Tool (WIAT) — that will give corporations the ability to understand the impacts of their wastewater on water quality in a telescoping way, from the global level down to the facility level. Armed with these data, companies will be able to intelligently identify opportunities for improving water quality and sustainability in local watersheds.
Armed with these data, companies will be able to intelligently identify opportunities for improving water quality and sustainability in local watersheds.
— John Sabo
We plan to tackle the development of the tool in several phases:
- First, we’ll create a sketch of the global tool, which will allow corporations to assess the impacts of their facilities globally on climate, biodiversity, and water security. In this phase corporations will also be asked to estimate GHG emissions for existing and planned wastewater treatment facilities.
- Then, in Phase Two, we’ll create a sketch of the sub-basin tool, which will require corporations to recommend the best actions for fostering synergies with other basin stakeholders.
We intend WIAT to be a breakthrough tool, made possible by a breakthrough private-sector commitment to sustainability and to improving water quality. The potential is huge and we’re eager to see how WIAT will help spur a larger call to action for businesses around the world as they build long-term business strategies that necessitate sound wastewater strategies.
For more information about ASU Future H2O’s work and research on creating opportunities for global water abundance, visit our website and subscribe to our newsletter.
