Being environmentally sustainable goes beyond premises and manufacturing plants, and requires efforts to green the whole supply chain. Janda Campos, group director, sustainability engagement, Grundfos, shares with Water & Wastewater Asia on how the company has been driving water and energy efficiencies, as well as improving water access globally.
What are the factors that contribute to water sustainability, and why is sustainable water management critical for cities and water utilities?
Janda Campos: Water sustainability calls for industries, utilities, and communities to use water wisely. This means using our water resources efficiently, as well as understanding how we get the most out of our water through treatment and reuse.
This is important because water is a crucial pillar that needs to be addressed urgently for us to truly achieve global sustainability. It is a scarce and rapidly depleting resource that touches every aspect of our lives and livelihood, and beyond that it is intrinsically linked to our energy use, as it requires a tremendous amount of energy to treat and transport water.
What are some of the water reuse methods that will support a circular economy? More crucially, what are the challenges involved, and how is Grundfos helping utilities to address them?
Campos: A key way to support a circular economy is reusing industrial wastewater in industries. Notably, industry is one of the key areas accounting for a significant part of the world’s freshwater usage. As industralisation continues, the global water deficit will inevitably widen. By treating used water back to a usable quality and the feeding it back into the company’s water cycle, its operations will essentially be closer to moving away from its resilience on one-time use, and shifting toward a more sustainable method of handling water.
We do this by building on the foundation we already have – holistic solutions that improve efficiencies by going beyond the performance of individual pumps. Through the pumps that we sold in 2020, we have enabled our end-users to reuse over 1.5 billion cubic metres water per year, which is the equivalent of approximately 600,000 Olympic-sized pools. For example, our solutions are used by water-intensive brewing industry to help reuse the wastewater from cleaning during the brewing process.
The full article is published on the latest Water & Wastewater Asia Sep/Oct 2021 issue. To continue reading, click here.
