Across the nation corporations are stepping up their sustainable efforts beyond reducing, reusing and recycling. Corporations are measuring and offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, composting and now, measuring their water use alongside their energy use. 

 

A new consumption tool, the Corporate Water Gauge (Gauge), was launched this week from the Center for Sustainable Innovation that, like other tools, measures water usage. However, the Gauge also considers the available local water supply to provide a degree of the corporation’s sustainability. By comparing water consumption to the rate a local aquifer, river and watershed can feasibly replenish the corporation’s water consumed, the business can learn and analyze how its consumption habits impact the environmental footprint.

 

Then policies and procedures can be applied to reduce that footprint such as replacing a portion of the corporation’s water supply with recycled water. 

 

This can have great application to small and medium sized businesses looking to cut costs and reduce their environmental footprint without having to invest in more expensive green options. Government and public agencies can also use this tool to lead the way in businesses for reducing the strain on fresh water supplies and endangering wildlife species.

 

Applying this tool across the businesses, government and public agencies in California’s San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta watershed, may quiet lawsuits over endangered Delta smelt and salmon populations, and begin to hold all businesses accountable for unnecessary water consumption providing the state with more available water during an anticipated drought in 2009.