According to the World Health Organization, water scarcity affects one in three people3. The problem will get worse as populations grow and consumption patterns change, boosting demand for water in agriculture, industry and communities. In addition, climate change is likely to reduce water availability in some regions4.
Understanding and mitigating the impacts of water use present unique challenges. Just as different energy sources create different levels of greenhouse-gas emissions, different water sources and uses also have different impacts. The significance of water use also varies with location - a liter of water is more precious in the desert than in the rainforest, whereas burning a kilogram of coal creates the same emissions everywhere.
Mars has several projects to develop better methods of measuring the impacts of water use on our business and on communities in the watersheds associated with our value chain. These projects consider the following factors:
- The total quantity of water used
- The water source, e.g., rainfall or aquifer
- Levels of local water stress
- Wastewater quality.
We are helping to define and standardize metrics and methodologies so we can develop the best strategies and long-term goals for reducing our impact on water quality and availability. In 2008, we began a collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, to develop a method, implemented in 2009, to calculate the water footprint of M&M'S® peanut chocolate candies and DOLMIO® pasta sauce in Australia, where water scarcity is a pressing concern. We found that while the volume of water used to grow the ingredients for and produce M&M'S® was much larger than that for DOLMIO®, the local water impact of DOLMIO® was much greater, as tomato production relies on irrigation in highly water-stressed regions. In addition to working with tomato producers to reduce water use, we are now conducting a more exhaustive study of water use in the rice-producing regions relevant to our business.
CSIRO has written several papers that demonstrate the importance of assessing the local impacts of water use, rather than the volume of water used, based on this work. Read one example, co-authored by Mars Associate Roger Bektash, here.
We are also working to develop more robust water metrics for our manufacturing sites as part of our work with The Sustainability Consortium.
3WHO: Ten Facts about Water, March 2009 - http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/water/water_facts/en/index1.html
4The Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science. Allison, et. al. The University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre, Sydney, Australia 2009, pp15-16
