Ecolab CEO: Business must end water waste and reuse

Ecolab (chairman and CEO Christophe Beck) commits to help customers save enough water for the drinking needs of one billion people by 2030; the company says it helped save enough water for over 780 million people last year.

• Main announcement and specifics:Ecolab (Christophe Beck) has made a public commitment to help customers save the drinking-water needs of one billion people by 2030; the company reports it helped save enough water for over 780 million people last year. Ecolab is deploying technologies and services in industries including data centers and microelectronics (chip fabs)—notably direct-to-chip cooling, coolant-distribution units (CDUs), and fluid-quality management—to enable reuse/recycling of water within production processes.
• Background and implementation details: Ecolab is a global company with 48,000 employees, serves 40 industries in 170+ countries, and has annual revenues of $16 billion. The company highlights that 150 companies impact a third of global water usage (driving the Water Resilience Coalition effort). Beck says Ecolab has refocused R&D toward data centers and chip manufacturing, cites estimates that AI by 2030 will require power roughly the size of India and drinking-water needs comparable to the United States, and plans to use digital tools and AI to scale the expertise of its ~27,000 experts across markets. The company is also consolidating systems (ERP, CRM, one cloud) as part of implementation.