Water Management
Optimisation
Water stress is a serious threat to our lives, livelihoods and businesses, it is poised to worsen unless we act together.
Through consistent water metering, management and optimisation interventions, we have been able to reduce water consumption across our operations in the UAE. Similar monitoring and optimisation initiatives are being implemented in other countries as well. The water performance of our UAE operations is depicted in the graphs below.
In our efforts to conserve scarce water resources, our primary objective is to prevent avoidable waste. The key measures that we are undertaking throughout our operations include the following:
- Ongoing awareness campaigns to optimally use water at our offices and warehouses
- Installation of efficient fixtures and faucets in our new builds and retrofit the existing ones wherever possible.
- Installation of dual flush WCs at our office and warehouses, which saves water on an ongoing basis.
- Our landscaping primarily consists of native plant species which are better suited to our local environment, and thus, inherently consume less water than non-native species.
- Grey water recycling is also practiced at our Head office 2 building
In line with our commitment towards reducing our environmental impact and based on the feasibility study we conducted in 2019, we installed water filtration system at Head office 2 and Main warehouse in Dubai. The project was undertaken to eliminate the use of plastic bottles and reduce health impacts of human exposure to toxins of plastic.
A total of 17 water filtration units were installed at strategic locations which benefitted 470+ employees. One key benefit was the time and storage space saved from carrying the 5-gallon water bottles (over 120 bottles per week in warehouse, and over 45 bottles in HO2) in and out of the buildings. Furthermore, the new boiling water systems also allowed to reduce the waiting time during time-sensitive breaks of our warehouse teams.
As a result of the initiative we were able to reduce approximately 9,000 kgs of plastic bottles and 1,300 kgs of crude oil required to produce the plastic bottles. The project also resulted into monetary savings with an attractive payback period of four years.
Considering the success of this initiative shall be replicated across DIP and CGR warehouse and roll it out in KSA warehouses.
