Water, Water Scarcity Crisis, Water pollution

I was fortunate to be able to speak with Snehal Desai this week as part of our series on our Future of Drinking Water series. Snehal, or Sne as he is commonly known, is the Global Marketing Director for Dow Water and Process Solutions. We talked about the role of industry in the overall water [...]

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What better way to celebrate World Water Day yesterday than the announcement of a $6 million dollar commitment toward water sanitation partnerships throughout Africa? Since 2005, the Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Africa Foundation have created 34 water projects in 19 countries in partnership with USAID and WADA. As part of Coke’s 3-tier water stewardship strategy [...]

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Levi’s promises to commit US$250,000 to Water.org to fund programs that collectively will provide at least 52.8 million gallons (200 million liters) to safe water projects. Water.org’s programs focuses on clean water and sanitation initiatives in South Asia, Latin America and Africa, regions that could definitely use a boost.

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Yesterday, was World Water Day, the UN’s commemoration of our most precious resource. This year’s focus was on Water for Cities. I spent the day pretty well immersed in the subject (not literally, it was far too chilly here in New York for that), but virtually. I spent several hours transcribing a fascinating interview with [...]

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By Thomas S. Rooney, Jr., president and CEO of Energy Recovery Inc If you are like most readers of this website, there is a great chance that you did not mark World Water Day on your 2011 calendars. In 1993, the United Nations established March 22nd as World Water Day and has since encouraged us [...]

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One thing I’ve learned while putting together this series on the future of drinking water  is this: it’s a lot easier to get stories from people who are actively engaged in selling water, and are making a living doing so, than it is from people who are otherwise concerned with water protection or distribution. This [...]

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Last Thursday Walmart announced that it eliminated over 80% of its waste that otherwise would have ended up in landfills across California. The initiative’s success has sparked Walmart to roll out the program across the United States.

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By Dan Bena, Director of Sustainable Development, PepsiCo Fifteen seconds. That’s how often a child dies from a water-related illness.  Think of how long it will take you to read this blog or sit in a meeting today…and then consider that 15-second statistic.  Depressing, I know. The good news is that today, only one billion [...]

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In our series so far, we have heard mostly from people in the bottled beverage business, talking about opportunities to become more sustainable by improving their packaging and by using water more efficiently. This, of course, is only one facet of the future of drinking water and we will be exploring several others as the [...]

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Will the U.S. Catch Up with the Rest of the World? Hugh Wheelan of Responsible Investor conducted a great interview of Kevin Parker, Global Head of Deutsche Asset Management (DeAM) based in New York City. In it, Parker puts forth the most positive outlook yet that private money is finally coming to climate change technology. [...]

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by Hugh Share A year on from the announcement of our global environmental goals, Anheuser-Busch InBev is on track to achieve a global water usage rate that will put the company on the leading edge of the brewing industry. As the issue of sustainable water use continues to climb the corporate agenda, it has become [...]

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This is a final installment of the Triple Pundit interview with Michael Washburn, newly appointed Director of Sustainability for Nestlé Waters North America. To view parts one and two, click here. 3p: How much willingness is there among the people above you, would you say, to take action even if it does mean digging into [...]

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This is a continuation of the interview in three parts with Michael Washburn, newly appointed Director of Sustainability for Nestlé Waters North America. 3p: If your number one sustainability concern is the bottle, why not move to a 100% recycled PET bottled as Naked Juice has done? MW: Are you familiar with our Resource brand? [...]

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I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Washburn, who just recently hired on with Nestlé Waters as director of sustainability. Prior to this job Michael came from an NGO background, with senior positions at both the Wilderness Society and the Forest Stewardship Council. He has a PhD in Forest Policy from Penn State. We [...]

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Stonyfield Farms continues its tradition of promoting and supporting organic farming with its Stonyfield Organic Farmers Grant-A-Wish program. More than 70 organic farms, all members of the Organic Valley cooperative, submitted videos detailing their ideas to advance organic farming and make a positive change on their own farms. A team of experts from Stonyfield and Organic Valley narrowed [...]

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Pike Research recently completed a study that evaluated the global market for smart metering, and concluded that by 2016, over 31 million smart water meters in some form will be installed across the globe–almost quadruple the estimated amount that existed by the end of 2010.

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As soon as I found out that I would have the opportunity to interview Michael Washburn, the new Sustainability Director of Nestlé Waters, I decided to make that the centerpiece of a new series on The Future of Drinking Water, featuring a number of interviews and guest contributors. Because this issue of clean, safe potable [...]

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Coca-Cola just released their 2009-10 Sustainability Review calling it “Our commitment to making a positive difference in the world.” In many ways it’s an impressive document, laying out both strategy and accomplishments as well as their overall CSR framework that they call “Live Positively.” In an opening letter from Chairman Kent Muhtar, it’s clear that [...]

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California Assemblyman Jose Solorio of Santa Ana introduced Assembly BIll (AB) 275 last week in Sacramento. The Rainwater Capture Act of 2011 would authorize landowners to install, maintain and operate two different rainwater capture systems.

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New York City still creates an excess of methane gas, half of which is still wasted because the city’s treatment plants burn them off. The city is searching for private vendors that have the capacity to churn that wasted methane into energy for homes and businesses. One partnership in the works could create enough energy to heat up to 2500 homes in Brooklyn.

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Hard to believe how quickly we forget. The BP Gulf Oil spill that was presumed to be the fossil fuel industry’s Chernobyl is now, for most of us, little more than a dim memory, less than a year later. To prove it, we have the report this week, of BP’s 4th quarter earnings which show [...]

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Remember when space was the final frontier? Perhaps it still is, but in the years that have passed since we started saying that, a new, more immediate frontier has emerged: sustainability. The folks at NASA agree, which is why their latest mission on Earth, located at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, is something [...]

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Something interesting is bubbling up in the Pacific Northwest. And it’s not beer. But it has a connection to it. Water offsets, or as their creator BEF calls them, Water Restoration Certificates do the seemingly impossible: Bring water back to dead or seasonally running waterways. Four billion gallons as of 2010. But it’s not some [...]

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By: David Delasanta Chesapeake Bay – Current Situation The Chesapeake Bay is in a deplorable state. The waters of the 64,000 square-mile watershed, which covers parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland and Washington DC, have been deteriorating for decades due to water and air pollution. One of the most pronounced pollution [...]

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Since 1961, Singapore imported drinking water for its now 5 million citizens from Malaysia. One of the contracts expired this year, and for political and economic reasons Singapore’s government did not renew either agreement. What was at one time 40% of the country’s drinking water, however, has got to come from somewhere, so now water from the tap will come from salvaged rainwater, desalination, and finally, NEWater.

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