With climate change, water scarcity and souring water demand, it becomes a moral duty to manage water resources smartly and sustainably. Businesses and communities must take action to ensure water availability at a reasonable cost. In this article, we'll explore what smart and sustainable water management looks like, and how it can benefit both businesses and the environment.

By using technology to optimize water usage and reduce waste, businesses can reduce their water bills and improve their bottom line. Second, by reducing water waste and pollution, businesses can help preserve local ecosystems and protect people and wildlife from waterborne diseases. Finally, smart and sustainable water management is important for ensuring that we have enough clean water to meet our needs in the future. As water scarcity becomes an increasingly pressing issue, it's more important than ever to use water resources wisely and sustainably.

The first step in implementing smart and sustainable water management is to conduct a water audit. This involves assessing how much water is being used in every production step, which water qualities are required for each application. Then comes the assessment of the costs for sourcing the water, the penalties for discharging untreated wastewater, the costs for meeting discharge compliancy and wastewater treatment infrastructure as well as for its operation. Finally, the opportunity costs of reusing treated wastewater makes the water audit complete.

Note that in the food & beverage industry, wastewater can be often used for recovering energy too. Waterleau provides valuable biogas from anaerobic wastewater treatment for global F&B brands. The cost savings from energy or even nutrient recovery should be included in overall water project.

With a deep understanding of their water usage patterns, businesses can identify opportunities to reduce waste and optimize usage.

• Invest in performant water treatment technologies with optimal total cost of ownership. Water treatment, wastewater treatment and water recovery require important resources for construction, operations and maintenance. Is space, available? What about CAPEX and OPEX? Is know-how available for the operations?
• Educate employees: Sustainable water use should be a state-of-mind. Employees play an important role in water management. By educating employees on water conservation and providing training on how to use water efficiently, employees become ambassadors for rational water use.
• Implement water-saving measures: check for the low-hanging fruit first. There are always quick-win measures which help to reduce water usage, such as fixing leaks, improved monitoring and re-assessing water use and qualities for each application.

Smart and sustainable water management is essential for businesses that want to sustainable way cut down the water footprint. By investing in technology, educating employees, and implementing water-saving measures, businesses can take an important step towards smart and sustainable water management. Waterleau will help with auditing, consultancy, process design, construction and even financing water and wastewater treatment projects.