Goal:
_____
Implement holistic water strategies across all facilities, prioritizing manufacturing plants and communities in high-risk watersheds
Enable millions of people access to clean water through leadership in advancing water technology and enacting strategic partnerships
Roadmap to 2030
As we work towards our 2030 objectives, we focused our efforts in 2020 on:
01
Finalizing our water stewardship risk review by cross-referencing risk modeling results with insights from site operations leaders
02
Enacting collaborations and partnerships to provide greater access to clean water and promote global water stewardship, like our collaborations with charity:water and the Brave Blue World Foundation
03
Working with our customers to leverage technology that abates water security issues
Holistic water stewardship
Water is essential to life on earth, which gives this simple molecule an outsized role in every aspect of sustainability. Already, one in three people in the world lack access to clean drinking water. Over the next three decades, population growth will drive a 50–70% increase in water demand for the municipal and industrial sector, resulting in water stress in many of Earth’s watersheds.
We need new and better water technologies to protect the world’s natural processes, to increase the availability of clean water, and ultimately to improve human wellbeing, from equality to economic empowerment and education.
At DuPont, we’re taking action now to be part of the solution—our DuPont Water Solutions business designs water solutions that will help our customers maximize water usage, minimize discharges, and protect water supplies, and we are strategically improving water stewardship at our own manufacturing plants and other sites.
How DuPont Water Solutions is solving global water challenges
In 2020, we became the only supplier to offer dry-tested seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) membranes. Dry elements bring multiple benefits to customers compared to wet-tested elements, including increased shelf life, more flexibility for storage, and improved sustainability due to fewer chemicals and reduced shipping weights. Lighter dry elements reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to shipping, with savings equivalent to 7 million auto miles driven for a typical large-scale desalination plant installation.
In 2020, DuPont Water Solutions entered into an exclusive global partnership with Sun Chemical and the DIC Corporation to bring our Ligasep™ membrane degasification modules to the water purification market. The degasification of liquids is becoming increasingly critical to several essential water treatment processes, including industrial demineralization, oil and gas production, microelectronics manufacturing, pharmaceutical production, and drinking water treatment.
In 2020, we finalized the acquisition of inge® GmbH and proudly integrated its industry-leading multi-bore PES ultrafiltration technology into our portfolio of water purification and separation capabilities. The product lines will join DuPont’s trusted FilmTec™ Reverse Osmosis and Nanofiltration Membranes, “Integraflux™ / Integrapac™ Ultrafiltration Portfolio, and Amber series of Ion Exchange Resins to provide more options for customers in the treatment of drinking water, process water, waste water and sea water.
In addition to our advocacy work through the Smart Water Alliance and other industry associations and initiatives, DuPont Water Solutions and other leading global water innovators partnered with the Brave Blue World Foundation to create a powerful new documentary that explores how new technologies and ground-breaking innovations can create a sustainable water future for the entire planet.
25M
DuPont water technologies process 25 million gallons of water every minute around the world
Localized water treatment facility provides safe, reliable drinking water in Ethiopia
Managing water at our sites
We withdraw and purchase water from various local sources and entities for use in our businesses. Some of that water is treated and returned to a local water body, some is rendered in our manufacturing processes, or used for other purposes such as employee health and hygiene. In 2019 and 2020, we used the WRI Aqueduct Water Risk Modeling Tool and WWF’s Water Risk Tool to model water stress levels and water-related risks for all DuPont sites around the world. We then worked with an external consultant to validate those results with a site-based survey to understand how sites with various levels of risk exposure interact with water.
To help ensure we meet our 2030 Sustainability Goals, we will fold the Alliance for Water Stewardship International Water Stewardship Standard methodology into the ISO 14001 environmental management systems at sites where there are validated significant water risks. The AWS Standard is a framework that helps companies and other major water users to understand their water use and impacts, and to work collaboratively and transparently for environmentally, socially and economically sustainable water management at the scale of a local catchment.
We provide more detail on our interactions with water and our management practices for water in our CDP Water disclosure.
Our Leading Water Stewardship Stories
Advancing underwater desalination
In 2020, DuPont Water Solutions entered into a collaboration with Waterise, an energy company that aims to provide solutions to the global water shortage. The collaboration aims to provide seawater reverse osmosis membranes—which purify water—and expertise to the company’s sub-sea desalination plants.
Bringing water to drought-striken communities
The 2,000 residents of Serdo experience water insecurity daily, needing to travel 1.5 kilometers (about a mile) to retrieve potable water. The community bored a well to find groundwater, but was devastated to learn that the water was dangerously hot, and heavily contaminated with salts and fluoride.
High-efficiency, high-performance wastewater treatment
In 2020, our OxyMem company was named the “Breakthrough Technology Company of the Year” by the Global Water Awards for its innovative Membrane Aerated Biofilm Reactor (MABR) technology.
See all our leading water stewardship stories
Read more stories about how DuPont is leading in water stewardship in our Stories Hub...
