Celebrating World Water Day with DuPont Water Solutions
Article | Jeroen Bloemhard | March 22, 2024
Every March 22, we celebrate World Water Day to unite toward solving the global water and sanitation crisis. This year, under the theme, “Water for Peace,” the day reminds us of the deep interconnection of water security, peace, and prosperity.
Recently, I took on a new role, leading DuPont Water Solutions, the corporation’s business unit focused on water purification and specialty-separation technologies.
My new colleagues are very passionate about our purpose to contribute to a world in which every human has daily access to clean drinking water; every industry has enough water to make the products, foods and services in which we rely; and more of our global wastewater is treated or reused in a circular, sustainable way.
While we are making global progress, more work remains to be done. Today, 2.2 billion still live without safely managed drinking water, including 115 million people who drink surface water (WHO/UNICEF, 2023). And, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, roughly half of the world’s population is experiencing severe water scarcity for at least part of the year. And still too much wastewater is going back into our ecosystems untreated—polluting our freshwater resources, with missed opportunity for water and resource recovery.
But, our team is optimistic. Witnessing what our customers are making possible, we believe these challenges can be solved in our lifetimes— and it is a purpose that drives us every day.
With an affinity for World Water Day, here are a few ways our team celebrated:
- In China, we continued our “Flow of Life” impact work in Shenzhen, with employees volunteering in classrooms and community events to inspire the protection of water resources, reaching more than 23,000 students and neighbors.
- In Spain, our team at the Tarragona Water Center is celebrating by cleaning up the Glorietta River. Through DuPont’s Clear Into the Future Program, our team is working with local partners to protect the biodiversity of the river.
- In India, earlier this month, our team collaborated with United Way of Mumbai to build a gabion structure to improve watershed management for a drought-affected agrian village in the Karjat area of Maharashtra.
- In Kenya, we are celebrating two new water treatment plants that will provide clean drinking water for more than 15,000 people. One of the plants, recently commissioned, is purifying source water from Lake Victoria heavily contaminated by microbial and chemical pollutants. The other, which just broke ground, will defluorinate source water from Lake Baringo. For both projects, DuPont collaborated with Childfund International and Davis & Shirtliff, donating skills-based volunteerism and ultrafiltration modules.
- In Chauny, after experiencing regional drought in 2022-2023, the plant is in the process of a holistic water stewardship review including both site and basin-related inputs to create a framework to lower future water risks. (Our Qingpu and Huzhou sites in China are undergoing the same water stewardship process).
- We also hosted our customers from Tetra Pak, a global food processing and packaging company, for a virtual Blue Talk on opportunities to better optimize water within the dairy industry.
- In Edina, our team is counting water saved in our production processes thanks to product innovation. By designing Dry Seawater RO products, the team saved 7 million gallons of water (14 Olympic sized swimming pools) that would’ve been used to test these elements in the last year.
While we enjoy celebrating World Water Day with our team, customers, and partners, we love celebrating water every single day. And every single day, we will continue to innovate and collaborate to increase the resilience of our global water resources. Peace and prosperity—and so much more—depend on it.
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