Thirst is a threat – and a business opportunity

Elliot Wilson says that scarcity of clean water will soon be as big an economic issue as scarcity of carbon fuel, and explores how global corporations such as Coca-Cola are addressing it

The summer of 2007 in the south-east United States was one of the hottest and most arid on record. Aquifers ran dry, as did the reservoirs that feed the country’s fastest-growing major conurbation, Atlanta. Water rationing hit households and corporations alike, but nowhere were the restrictions more keenly felt than at Number One Coca-Cola Plaza, home to the world’s best-selling beverage, and to a company that has become a world leader in water stewardship and sustainability.

Faced with the swingeing restrictions – and the possibility of becoming pariahs in their home state if they were exceeded – Coca-Cola switched production to other US sites. ‘We were challenged in our day-to-day operations due to the need to become even more water-efficient,’ says Greg Koch, the company’s Atlanta-based director of global water stewardship. ‘We had to shift production of some products out of Atlanta – which reduced the need for water required to clean mixing equipment between changes in flavours.’

Following a particularly soggy winter, Coke is now operating normally again at HQ. But last year’s drought showed how dependent even the world’s largest corporations are on a fast-dwindling resource: clean, fresh, potable water.

We simply cannot do without water. Man or beast, it comprises most of what we are and most of what we eat. If we don’t drink enough of it, we die. If it is contaminated and we drink it, we may die. If our watercourses become polluted too we will probably die, but more slowly, brought down by typhoid, cholera, or cancer. Like salt, another commodity on which the human body is utterly dependent, we seek it out wherever we go. Many of our most cherished childhood memories contain water in some form: a trip to the beach; the roaring waterfall that frightened us; a local pond that iced up in the winter. It’s in our vested interest to protect our watercourses, conserve them and keep them clean.