A young boy smiles at the camera in Kabirwala, Pakistan, while his father looks on happily, as they collect clean drinking water. It’s an image that I love, one it motivates me in my work on water as Assistant Public Affairs Manager at Nestlé Pakistan.

We can’t take water for granted

Ammar, that’s the boy’s name, and his father, were benefiting from a facility that we built to provide people with free access to clean drinking water, near our factory in Kabirwala. It’s one of the six facilities that we’ve built across Pakistan in recent years.

By Andrew Chastain-Howley, Director of Water Solutions, Atonix Digital

Few appreciate the cost of water like commercial facilities and industrial manufacturers. Many of them are selling a product that requires water as part of the larger infrastructure setup that ultimately results in consumer goods. Take for instance food and beverage makers, for whom water is the good. Or paper and pulp companies, whose dry products rely almost exclusively on water.

It is no surprise that after labor costs, energy is the next highest operational cost for water and wastewater utilities. Water is an extremely heavy resource, requiring enormous amounts of energy to move and treat it. As energy costs continue to rise and more states adopt regulatory incentives and disincentives that drive large-scale sustainability and efficiency efforts, it is expected that utilities will become more aggressive in their approach to managing energy. 

by Theodosia Ferguson and E. Seth Wilson, Healing Living Systems