Businesses urged to ‘SWiM’ with new sustainable water management concept

Pollution Solutions: Businesses are being urged to consider a fresh approach to managing their water usage and disposal through a new sustainable management concept - SWiM - which promises to underpin business resilience and generate cost savings.

An alliance of four expert water related companies has come together to launch SWiM - Sustainable Water Management for innovation, investment and infrastructure – a pioneering approach to guiding businesses or major projects towards a fully integrated and sustainable approach to managing water. A successful SWiM strategy could deliver a robust return on investment with an attractive payback period.

“It’s the logical approach, really,” explains David Schofield of Hydro Consultancy (the consultancy arm of Hydro International, UK), which is collaborating with specialist commercial water consultants Cadantis, rainwater harvesting specialists Aquality and drilling contractors Geotechnical to launch SWiM.

...“Some major business users consume vast amounts of high-quality potable water for everything from toilet flushing to cooling tower supply, irrigation to vehicle washing. Consequently, they pay a high-quality price for it, too. Meanwhile rainfall generally runs off the impermeable surfaces of their buildings, car parks and yards. Quite often it is held back in underground tanks before being discharged off-site sometimes to become someone else’s problem – in many instances the water company is supplying the same potable water they are consuming.

“SWiM can deliver a real commercial advantage to companies by helping them to integrate their water management in a genuinely sustainable manner. It will also help them to demonstrate Corporate Social Responsibility.”...

Water on a car roof, shot by Andrew Bossi, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license