All major corporations have water stewardship goals and programs to maintain a healthy watershed in the areas they operate within. For most of these, the focus has been on water-stressed areas, which bring risks in terms of business, social license to operate and costs. However, even in water stressed areas where reuse is one strategy for mitigating these risks, companies face technical, regulatory and consumer perception barriers to reusing process wastewater. In a recent panel discussion with four global beverage companies, we discussed these challenges. They highlighted the following points as most relevant:
There will always be challenges. The question is what can be done to overcome these challenges. We brought together a second panel discussion [1] with experts from the utility, engineering and end user perspectives who have brought reuse projects to fruition and can share their experience. Four key takeaways were: