Are you water positive?

14 July 2021

A common theme on the blog is that going green isn’t only about sustainable equipment and ticking boxes on tender forms. It involves all aspects of an organisation’s operation. 

So I was interested to see that Microsoft has joined several other multinational businesses in becoming a Principal Partner - or top tier sponsor - of the UN climate change Cop26 conference in Glasgow from 1 to 12 November. 

The Government announcement said that the software giant plans not only to be carbon neutral by 2030, but also to have removed from the environment all the carbon emitted since its foundation by 2050. 

By 2030, Microsoft also aims to be water positive – a term I hadn’t heard of before. 

The company’s president Brad Smith has said that humanity depletes the available freshwater supply at a rate of 4.3 trillion cubic metres every year, chiefly for agriculture and industrial purposes. 

And the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has warned that the UK risks running out of water by 2040 if more is not done to protect supplies and fix leaking pipes. 

Brad Smith says Microsoft will both reduce the water it uses for its operations and replenish water in the water-stressed regions where it has facilities. In this way it aims to replenish more than it consumes by 2030. 

In a future follow-up post, I’ll discuss how the organisation plans to do this, and how others might emulate it. 

And in a number of ways the hire industry already has experience of being water positive...  

● Read the follow-up post here. 

Picture: Rony Michaud/Pixabay