ST. PAUL, MINN.—Ecolab Inc., in partnership with the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), announced that its manufacturing plant in Taicang, China, is the first site in the world to be independently certified under the AWS’s global standard for water stewardship.
The AWS Standard is an ISEAL-compliant framework developed to promote sustainable freshwater use and to evaluate water stewardship practices, developed through a four-year, multi-stakeholder, water roundtable process that included diverse business, public sector and civil society interests from around the world. This globally consistent and locally adaptable standard outlines a set of water stewardship criteria and indicators for how water should be stewarded at a site and catchment level in a way that is environmentally, socially and economically beneficial.
“Water stewardship is vital to both a healthy environment and a healthy economy,” said Ecolab Chairman and CEO Douglas M. Baker, Jr. “We help more than one million customers around the world reduce their water footprints, and believe it’s essential that we also leverage this expertise to advance water stewardship within our own operations.”
Ecolab is one of nearly 30 leading organizations from across sectors to advance the efforts of AWS to protect the world’s limited freshwater resources.
Mission: To Promote Responsible Freshwater Use
“This first certification is a critical milestone as we pursue our mission to promote responsible use of freshwater,” said Adrian Sym, Executive Director, Alliance for Water Stewardship. “It is fitting that Ecolab is the first company to achieve certification, given their leadership in driving improved water use and their consistent support of the aims of AWS. We congratulate Ecolab and look forward to the next steps of our collective journey towards sustainable use of freshwater.”
Ecolab is a founding partner of AWS and was one of the first companies to pilot the AWS Standard. Ecolab partnered with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to field test and implement the framework at its Taicang manufacturing plant, which is located in a water-sensitive area in the Taihu basin of the Yangtze region.
This work resulted in a systematic approach to water stewardship that included implementation of water reduction projects within the facility as well as initial collective action with other water users and stakeholders, including local authorities, operating within the same catchment.
A Groundbreaking Certification Step
“We’ve seen the AWS Standard help businesses translate global commitments into on-the-ground action, which includes working with others in the basin on shared water challenges,” said Karin Krchnak, Director of Freshwater Programs at WWF. “As the first to become certified, Ecolab is paving the way for others to use the AWS Standard as a road map towards water stewardship for people, profits and nature.”
Ecolab’s facility in Taicang opened in August 2012 and is the company’s largest site in the Asia Pacific region. The facility produces a complete portfolio of cleaning, sanitizing, food safety and infection prevention solutions for customers in a wide range of growing industries, including: food and beverage production, food retail, hospitality, healthcare and dairy, meat and poultry processing.
Certification of Ecolab’s Taicang site to the AWS Standard was undertaken by TÜV Rheinland, an independent third-party AWS-accredited organization responsible for assessment of Ecolab’s compliance with the AWS Standard. In September 2015, TÜV Rheinland certified the Taicang manufacturing plant as “AWS Core Certified.” To learn more about Ecolab’s Taicang facility and the certification process, visit Ecolab.com.
