Celebrate World Water Day 2025 by creating a sustainable future

Since 1993, World Water Day has been celebrated as an annual United Nations Observance. This year’s theme is ‘Glacier Preservation’, highlighting the importance of these ice masses and their indication of the impact of global warming. While glaciers have been around since the Ice Age, they are undergoing a major transformation as the earth grows warmer.

Glaciers are quickly melting, with 2022-2023 data showing that reference glaciers lost around 26 liquid meters of water, the equivalent of 94 feet of ice in one year. This is startling, considering glaciers are the largest storage supply of earth’s freshwater. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) states that about 75% of the earth’s freshwater is stored in glaciers. While some of the glacier melt is captured for use, economic and logistical challenges serve as large-scale barriers to collect all the runoff.

The global impact of climate change does not discriminate; it affects all individuals and industries, including the stormwater industry. With increasing storm intensity and frequency, we are seeing more pollutants entering our freshwater resources, including fertilizers and heavy metals. Additionally, these temperatures and storms are stressing our infrastructure and fostering the growth of harmful algal blooms (HABs), impacting drinking water safety.

Regardless of sector, individuals and organizations across the globe must evaluate how they can reduce their environmental footprints. By helping support consumers in making more sustainable choices, evaluating an organization’s sustainability and providing public education, we can all do our part to help save our glaciers and our freshwater resources.

Empower consumers to choose sustainability

It is important to note that only 2.5% of the earth’s water is fresh and drinkable, highlighting the importance of ensuring that our freshwater sources are not being polluted. While water professionals understand what impacts sustainable stormwater practices, everyday consumers may not. However, they still play a role in our efforts to reduce our climate impact.

Helping consumers learn what they can do to make more sustainable choices is essential. Education campaigns around how waterways and drinking water are impacted when stormwater pollution and improper waste disposal are a great place to start. Furthermore, education about the different products consumers can utilize for their homes to reduce runoff, collect rainwater, redirect stormwater and control erosion to help protect waterways and drinking water is needed.

With technical jargon, multiple products to choose from and decision fatigue, consumers need support in making sustainable purchasing decisions. Remind them that eco-labels and third-party certifications are in place for water products to help quickly indicate a product’s environmental impact. A company’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report also serves as a transparent resource for consumers who want to dive deeper into a company’s environmental efforts. Lastly, resources like the EPA’s WaterSense platform are also available to consumers seeking more environmentally friendly products. By offering transparent marketing and reporting, organizations can help consumers make more responsible purchasing choices.

Improve business operations

Every organization must evaluate and improve its environmental impact in multiple areas, but in the water industry, we have the additional responsibility of innovating new, sustainable technologies and redesigning existing technologies to meet environmental needs better. Atmospheric water generators, greywater recycling systems and rainwater harvesting are some examples of emerging technologies to address these concerns, and we cannot stop here. We must continue developing and improving our methods of working with water to stay updated.

While the industry continues innovation, organizations can simultaneously establish an environmental process to act as a reference point to measuring environmental impact improvement. To begin, organizations can utilize ISO 14001: Environmental Management System (EMS) Standard as a tool for this process as it helps measure goals like energy efficiency, waste reduction, climate action and pollution reduction. It can also help organizations improve ESG goals and report them to stakeholders.

In fact, reducing waste is a significant way for organizations to reduce their impact. It pairs well with additional solutions like renewable energy, recycling programs, rainwater harvesting and water recycling. Evaluating water, chemical and plastic usage can highlight where a company can cut back, helping with consumption, saving money and helping with a building’s sustainability score. This is especially prevalent for those in the manufacturing sector as they operate heavy equipment. Energy-efficient machinery can play a significant role in environmental goals in addition to utilizing sustainable cleaning agents and packaging products in recyclable and biodegradable materials.

Accelerate public adoption 

As the water industry creates solutions to tackle climate change, some products may require public education to help speed up adoption. We saw this with residential desalination systems near coastal areas. Consumers were initially hesitant to adopt this technology as the perception was that they were expensive and needed a lot of energy to run them. With the improvement of membrane technology, they are becoming more accessible, allowing them to be better accepted.

In addition to combatting initial stigmas around technology efficiency and affordability, it is also important to communicate with the public that there are several laws and regulations in place to help ensure water systems meet stringent requirements for use and safety. The EPA guidelines, the SDWA and California’s Title 22 cover different requirements and are examples of federal and state protections in place. In addition to laws and regulations, industry standards are available and sometimes even required as a third-party certification to ensure compliance with industry benchmarks. An example of this is NSF/ANSI 350: Onsite Residential and Commercial Water Reuse Treatment Systems, which helps give consumers further peace of mind when it comes to new technology.

Make a difference

The stormwater industry can make a great difference this World Water Day as we work to tackle climate change globally, save our glaciers and preserve our freshwater resources. The impact of their disappearance on our industry and humanity is clear, and we all play a part in reducing our environmental impact to help.

As individuals and organizations as a whole, we can take practical steps to improve our environmental impact. Employing tactics like operating more sustainably by reducing waste and increasing energy efficiency, educating the public on the safety of new innovations and providing a transparent marketplace for them to make more sustainable purchasing choices, we can help move the needle forward. It is all our responsibility to do everything we can to help ensure a more sustainable future for generations to come.