This is class 3 in the MOOC specialization, Become a Sustainable Business Change Agent. This class looks at the big issues companies are fixing - climate change, water, worker satisfaction and supply chain issues. You will learn tools to help your company address these issues intelligently. The class ends with an assignment to set a science-based carbon reduction target for a small company. Tis is absolutely cutting edge material. Only about 300 companies in the whole world are doing this as of July 2017. You could put your company in the elite group! With the knowledge and tools you have acquired from the 3 classes in this specialization you are well on your way to making a difference in your company, and making the future brighter for everyone. Thank you for being part of this program!
Introduction to Water Issues
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De la lección
Water and Energy
Impartido por:
John Byrd
Senior Instructor
Kenneth Bettenhausen
Professor
Hi, this week we're going to start talk about water.
And we're here on the banks of the Animas river.
The river originates about 50 miles north in the mountains.
And this is a perfect example of all the things that a river has to do.
It has to support wildlife in this riparian zone,
there was a paddle boarder a minute ago, there's recreation.
The water will be extracted and
stored lower down in the river and it'll be used for agriculture.
So this is a perfect example of the many uses of water in
at least Southwest Colorado.
Water is 75% of the planet's surface,
but only about 1% of it is usable for humans, actually less than 1%.
When we're in a company and we think about water, we have to think about four things.
We have to think about location and where it is.
In part, location is the watershed that the water travels through.
Water doesn't move from watershed to watershed, it stays in that
intricate system of creeks and streams and rivers, all the way out to the ocean.
Within that water shed, we have to only take our fair share and
this gets us to context-based thinking, we'll come back to that.
There's water quality issues.
This water is beautiful right now.
Sometimes it runs through rock layers, it can actually cause natural pollution from
heavy metal, sometimes there's pollution from industrial use or agricultural use.
So water quality will reduce the amount of good water that's available to people.
Timing is another issue.
What we have here is late winter levels in the river.
Later on in the spring as the snow melts, this river's going to go up to,
I don't know it's probably running 3 or 400 cubic feet per second now.
It'll go up to 8,000 or 10,000 cubic feet per second.
Now, some areas are totally dependent on timing.
In India, Nepal, Southeast Asia,
totally dependent on the monsoon that brings those heavy rains in.
So, the whole agricultural system is set up to take advantage of monsoon rains.
Here, snowpack melts and
because we're in Southwest Colorado, we try to capture and store a lot of water.
We have dam systems that store water so
the timing gets adjusted and smoothed out for agricultural needs, mainly.
So what we're looking at right now is surface water.
And we really think of rain and snow melt as a water source, but
a lot of that water is recharging aquifers, underground storage areas.
Now, we can tap those with wells, but
we have to be careful then of recharge rates, how fast those
aquifers are refilling compared to how much we're withdrawing or pumping.
If we pump more than the recharge rate, we're going to have subsidence, and
we have places like Mexico City.
They're actually sinking,
buildings are starting to sink because of over pumping of the aquifer water.
Water quality is a huge issue.
And so, if we pollute here, we have downstream neighbors who are going to have
less water or water of poor quality that may be unusable.
Water quality is affected by our activities.
And as a company, you may have a bigger impact than homes or
other sort of residential uses.
You have to think about two things.
One is are you using chemicals?
Are you using any materials that,
as they go in the water collection sewer system, are going to be hard to treat?
So that the treated water, that eventually is returned for use,
actually isn't pure enough to be usable for human drinking or human use.
There's another aspect to this too,
there's something that we call non-point source pollution.
So if there's something going on outside of your building, fertilizing lawns or
something like that where the runoff goes off onto hard surfaces and
eventually into storm drains, that leads into rivers.
What we're going to see is algae blooms, we're going to see pollution.
It could be actually detrimental to life in the river,
if there are chemicals used to, treat de-icing or something like that.
So we have to pay attention to water quality and our impact on water quality.
We want to be sure that our downstream neighbors have water
quality that's as good as ours.
And we hope our upstream neighbors think of us when they behave so
that our water is as good as theirs.
So for your company, the very first thing you need to do is measure consumption.
How much water do you use?
And then you need to figure out if you can reduce that consumption in-house.
And there's lots of ways to do that.
First of all, leaks.
There's behavioral things about turning off fossils and whatnot?
There is low flow fixtures that you can install at relatively low cost,
almost no cost, that will cause your water use to go down.
Once you've done that, I think the biggest thing you could do as a change agent for
sustainability is think about what's your fair share of water and
that's going to vary from watershed to watershed depending on population,
the quantity of water and whatnot.
But in all areas, we need to be aware that there is some fair share for
our company and we determine that by first determining, what does nature need?
What does this riparian area here need?
What do the fish, minimum flow for fish?
And then what do residents need?
And you'll use for residential use,
human consumption bathing and whatnot and then companies get a share.
And we get some slice of that.
So context-based thinking.
If you could do that for your company.
Find out what your fair share of water use is and then use that as a target.
That would be a tremendous project for a sustainable business change agent.
Thanks.
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