Water and Sanitation

For billions of people, water and sanitation are the most pressing and immediate vital challenges. Today, above one billion people have no access to clean water, more than 2 billion lack proper sanitation. The United Nations has set, as a millennium goal, the objective to halve the proportion of people with no access to fresh water and sanitation by 2015.

Striving for sustainable water access and use

The causes and consequences of the water crisis are diverse. As are the approaches to solve water challenges at local levels. Whilst developing countries are struggling to improve access to drinking water and sanitation, developed countries must lead in sustainable water management solutions to better use and preserve available resources. Unlike energy, there is no alternative to water. And the contribution of all, business included, is needed to address the challenge.

Water Infrastructure in an Urbanising World: the cost of no action

One of the global challenges society has to meet is the rapid growth of the world’s population. This includes enabling large cities and their infrastructure to adopt the requirements of increasing influx to rapidly growing urban population. In 2009 Borealis commissioned a study to demonstrate the necessity of investments into renovation of the aging urban water infrastructure and advising on best practices for sustainable infrastructure solutions.

Read more about the Benefits of Pipeline Innovation Study

Borealis supporting a smart solution for a big sanitation challenge 

One of the aims of Water for the World is to improve access to sanitation through innovative solutions.  Still today 40% of the world’s population don’t have a private and hygienic place to answer the call of nature. Borealis supports the development of x-runner, a portable toilet innovation made out of plastics. 

Read more about x-runner

Promoting best practice in agriculture to preserve our water resources

70% of the world’s water resources are needed for food production. In a world of growing population, this puts our water resources at risks. Borealis has co-sponsored recently a study with the aim to underpin the need for more sustainable irrigation practices and to point out solutions to prevent unnecessary and excessive waste of water.

Increasing food production to meet the needs of the world’s growing population is one of the major challenges confronting the world today. The optimisation of crop quality through fertilizers whilst preventing excess rinse-off of nutrients therefore plays a key role in sustainable farming. Borealis is working closely together with farmers to create awareness and support them in applying so called “precision farming methods”.

Read more about the Irrigation Study
Read more about the Precision Farming Initiative of Borealis

Over 260,000 people reached with Water for the World™  

In 2007, Borealis together with Borouge have launched Water for the World, a partnership programme to advance solutions, expertise and know-how to address the global water challenge. The programme spans a full range of activities at global and regional levels, in science, industry and for local communities. To date, Water for the World has reached over 260,000 people worldwide.

 
Click on the image above to learn more about the achievements of Water for the World.

At a global level, the programme co-funds the annual Stockholm World Water Prize and supports the non-profit organisation "Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor" to develop large scale projects in urban slums. Within the industry, Borealis has pioneered the measurement and analysis of plastics water footprint, a key indicator with carbon and energy performance to drive sustainable production and products. At a regional level, our membership to the "Business Friends for the Danube" commits ourselves to demonstrate environmental leadership and initiate joint activities for protecting water resources and improving wastewater treatment in the Danube region.

Find out more about on www.waterfortheworld.net .

Share with us your feedback on your own perspective on plastics and the water challenge.