DuPont recently announced that it has joined the Water Resilience Coalition and signed the CEO Water Mandate as part of its goal to increase global access to clean water. Through these actions the company is strengthening its commitment to implement innovative, sustainable water strategies across its facilities, especially in high-risk watersheds.
"DuPont is proud to join a coalition of organizations that deeply understand the value of water resilience and the importance of industry taking collective action to improve our global water future," said Ed Breen, DuPont executive chairman and CEO. "With the ever-increasing impact of climate change on our global water supply, we must act with a sense of urgency to protect our water resources, now, and for future generations."
The Water Resilience Coalition, founded in 2020, is an industry-driven, CEO-led coalition of the UN Global Compact's CEO Water Mandate that aims to elevate global water stress to the top of the corporate agenda and preserve the world's freshwater resources through collective action in water-stressed basins and ambitious, quantifiable commitments.
By endorsing the mandate, a UN Global Compact initiative in co-secretariat with the Pacific Institute, DuPont commits to the continuous improvement in six core areas of water stewardship practice: direct operations, supply chain and watershed management, collective action, public policy, community engagement and transparency.
With this, DuPont becomes a part of the Mandate's global community, which gathers over 190 companies seeking to advance on water, sanitation, and the Sustainable Development Goals for corporate water stewardship.
Signing the Water Resilience Coalition pledge means DuPont also joins an ambitious group of over 30 companies and organizations committed to reducing water stress by 2050 in some of the most vulnerable basins around the world and advancing net-positive water impact through intersectoral partnerships and collective efforts.
While it is making a corporate-wide water stewardship commitment across its global operations, DuPont also plans to bring its expertise in water challenges and solutions to the collective impact of the Coalition. For example, DuPont helps municipalities and industrial water users purify water supply, optimize water usage, minimize discharges, recover valuable raw materials, and minimize energy consumption. DuPont will also make its water experts available to join the Coalition's committees to address the unique challenges of watersheds around the world.
DuPont's Water Solutions business unit has a broad portfolio of sustainable water purification and separation technologies and solutions that enable water reuse and recycling, desalination and groundwater access, including reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, ion exchange resins (IEX), ultrafiltration (UF), electrodeionization (EDI), nanofiltration (NF), membrane bioreactor systems (MBR), membrane aerated biofilm reactors (MABR), membrane degasification, and closed circuit reverse osmosis (CCRO) systems.
In addition to the Water Resilience Coalition and CEO Water Mandate, DuPont is working to optimize the global water supply through a variety of cross-sector partnerships and collaborations. For example, DuPont is sponsoring the forthcoming Economist Impact City Water Optimization Index that will help stakeholders around the world use data to make resource, investment and policy decisions to improve more cities' water futures.
"DuPont envisions a future where all 7.8 billion people on this planet have daily access to safe, clean drinking water, industry has the necessary water to make the products and foods on which we rely, and we optimize the circular nature of water in a sustainable, energy efficient way," said HP Nanda, global vice president and general manager, DuPont Water Solutions. "To shape a water future that is best for the planet and society, we will continue to collaborate with water stakeholders--across sectors and borders—to accelerate progress against shared water challenges."
