Veolia Water is helping companies and governments around the world get one step closer to sustainable water management with its internally developed indicator that enables a pragmatic and comprehensive assessment of the impact of human activity on water resources using a cradle to grave approach. Coined the Water Impact Index, the formula expands on existing volume-based water measurement tools by incorporating multiple factors such as resource stress and water quality.

“Unlike oil, fresh water has no substitute and cannot be transported from a water-rich regions to high-demand areas viably – considering the volumes necessary for day-to-day agriculture, manufacturing, energy production and household use,” says South African MD of the company, Dr Gunter Rencken. “It’s projected that fresh water availability could become the world’s main growth limitation factor, which means businesses and governments need to find ways of becoming smarter at managing water – beginning with holistically understanding the impact we have on water as a limited resource, and by making better decisions as to how we use, waste, pollute and reclaim water.”

The Water Impact Index takes into account water stress factors specific to a particular region and considers contributors like rainfall, groundwater levels, reservoir levels and overall water demand – among others. One of the main reasons for this is that water-inefficient practices are much more serious in arid or desert environments than in areas with abundant and consistent supply. “In South Africa for instance, the average percentage of fresh, is high-quality water that’s wasted due to leaking infrastructure fluctuates from province to province. This wastage places additional pressure on available resources to compensate for the loss, which also cannot be billed by municipalities – costing potential revenue and contributing to long-term water problems. These factors are an example of how water stress is different to each scenario and how, by only factoring consumption and the officially-declared water availability into decision making processes, insufficient data and a lack of holistic understanding could lead to less than ideal water management,” Rencken explains.

Veolia further takes into consideration the quality of water withdrawn from and released into the environment, along with numerous other factors relating to the functional requirements of water. In Durban, the company helped the municipality improve on its water index by designing, building and operating a water re-use plant that reclaims between 30 to 40 mega litres of domestic wastewater per day to grey water status, for use by the Mondi Paper and SAPREF refineries. This helped the municipality to redistribute large volumes of fresh drinking water to previously un-serviced communities throughout the region.