Water, logged: Software now calculates water footprint

By | May 27, 2010, 12:12pm PDT

One of the developers in the environmental compliance management software space, Locus Technologies, has added the ability to track water footprint-related information.

Water accounting covers two different concerns: the quantity of water that your business uses and the quality of the water it discharges. The latter comes in the form of keeping tabs on groundwater and surface water contamination that might be caused by your operations (whether they are manufacturing facilities or a huge headquarters building). There is a related energy component, of course, because it takes electricity to clean up or purify wastewater.

Here’s rationale from Neno Duplan, president and CEO of Locus, which delivers its environmental management applications as a service:

“Water management issues represent a potentially huge area of risk for business. Reducing one’s water footprint should be part of the environmental strategy of a business, just like reducing one’s carbon footprint or energy usage already is. … Meeting emissions standards for compliance purposes is one thing, but looking at how effluents’ management actually results in lower risk, reduced energy consumption, improved operational efficiency, and ultimately an improved bottom line is another thing.”

If you’ve been overlooking water management in your green technology initiatives, you’ll want to consider what Locus is doing as an indication of things to come.

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Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues.

Disclosure

Heather Clancy

Writing publicly about what the high-tech industry is actually doing to help itself and the world get greener or more sustainable is one way I figure I can contribute more meaningfully to said effort. I am also a big OMG-kind-of-fan of smart leadership, which is why the goodly folks who publish this blog let me go on about this topic and why I am always on the hunt for forward-looking business management ideas.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I also write often about emerging technology trends such as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as appropriate.

My corporate writing work usually consists of crafting research white papers about some aspect of technology. In the event that my commentary (in written, audio or video form) mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. However, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I am covering in my blog.

Biography

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll.

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