AT&T has identified water savings of up to 40% across its US operations by collaborating with a not-for-profit consultancy, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The two organisations have created a comprehensive water-saving toolkit to help other companies realise similar savings.
Water is vital for the cooling towers that keep many of AT&T's facilities running smoothly. These towers account for a large proportion of the 3.3bn gallons of water used by AT&T each year, so the telecoms company partnered with EDF in 2012 to evaluate the best ways to improve its water efficiency.
The company ran a series of pilot programmes across its US sites to measure the quantities of water, energy and chemicals that could be saved by making carefully calculated changes.
AT&T and EDF found water-saving opportunities of 14–40% at each pilot site, particularly in relation to cooling towers. Every option they identified made good business sense.
For example, upgrading a cooling tower filtration system costs less than £60,000 but promises more than £60,000 in annual water and waste water savings. Similarly, a simple equipment upgrade costing £2,400 promises nearly £24,000 in annual savings by expanding free air cooling.
The jointly produced water-saving toolkit was introduced in 2013. It can be tailored to suit organisations of different sizes and features water and cost-saving calculators and a cooling system efficiency guide, as well as training videos, infographics and sample water audit forms. EDF estimates that the toolkit could help US commercial buildings to save up to 28 billion gallons of water annually.
Katharine Earley is a journalist and copywriter, specialising in sustainability.
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