March 17, 2025
Agriculture and industry account for nearly 90% of freshwater withdrawals globally, dominating both water resource usage and contamination. Accordingly, this is where advances in water conservation can have the biggest positive impact. And there is some good news here. As farmers and industries have improved their operational efficiency over the years, water efficiency has often improved as well. In agriculture, advances in drip irrigation, soil moisture sensors and smart devices – along with the use of treated wastewater – have not only reduced water waste dramatically but also lowered water costs, improved yield quantity and quality. Better soil health and increased drought resilience are additional benefits to farmers’ bottom line.
The story is similar in industry, where water is critical to countless processes: cooling and heating, cleaning and rinsing, chemical reactions, transporting materials through pipelines and conveyors, sanitation, treating industrial waste or as an ingredient in food and beverages. Here, too, operational efficiency gains have reduced water inputs and waste per unit of production over the years. According to research carried out by American environmental scientist, Peter H. Gleick, before WWII, 60 to 100 tons of water were used to produce a ton of steel. By the early 2000’s, it was down to 6 tons per ton of steel – a tenfold improvement in water “productivity”.
Today, the case for smart water management in industry is more compelling than ever. In many regions, water rights are already bought, traded and regulated – like a commodity or currency. Severe drought in some parts of the world have led to skyrocketing water prices and legal disputes over usage rights. Corporations and governments are investing heavily in technologies like desalination and wastewater recycling to secure a stable supply.
At the same time, the focus is shifting to groundwater as a strategic resource: Many countries are prioritizing its protection as a drinking water source, imposing high levies or denying industrial enterprises access to the water table.
As farms, companies and municipalities vie for this increasingly precious resource, the challenge will be to ensure responsible access to usable water while balancing competing demands. Success will require action on multiple fronts: raising awareness about water management, enacting policies that balance the needs of people, industries and ecosystems and developing infrastructure to ensure a reliable water supply works.
Meanwhile, today’s advanced water efficiency and treatment technologies, including many from GEA, continue to minimize freshwater withdrawals in industry and agriculture and treat wastewater to enable recovery and reuse; this takes some of the strain off our dwindling supply of usable freshwater.GEA's Smart Filtration CIP and Flush are digital solutions that optimize cleaning processes within a GEA Membrane Filtration unit, reducing freshwater consumption during CIP by up to 52%. (Image: GEA)
And the list goes on. For example, GEA’s SeaWaterDistiller uses waste heat from ship engines to generate up to 30 tons of fresh water a day for use on container ships, LNG tankers and freighters at sea. And for yet another way to extract value from wastewater, GEA heat pump technology has enabled municipalities to capture heat from their wastewater as a source of low-carbon district heating. And GEA desalination plants turn salty seawater into potable water for communities in arid regions where freshwater is scarce or inaccessible.
In many ways, the work of GEA’s water-saving champions is just beginning. According to the UN, only about a quarter of industrial wastewater is treated; 42% of household wastewater is not properly treated, and the “health and livelihoods of 4.8 billion people could be at risk if current water quality monitoring is not improved” – to name a few sobering figures. Moreover, there remains huge untapped potential for wastewater reuse.
For GEA this means redoubling our efforts to continuously innovate to improve water efficiency. Our Add Better ecolabel – created as a way to help customers identify our latest efficiency improvements – embodies this spirit of continuous innovation.
Add Better solutions sold in 2023 alone will save nearly 5 million tons of CO2 emissions over their life cycle and save 16.4 million cubic meters of water at customers’ premises. By 2030, GEA aims to increase the share of sustainable products and solutions in its turnover to more than 60%. Furthermore, by 2030, all GEA solutions will be offered with a zero freshwater-use option – a significant achievement for GEA customers, the communities they operate in and for the planet.