How can you resist a chance to chop an essential operating expense nearly in half by adopting existing technologies?

When it comes to water conservation, there are plenty of tools that commercial, industrial and institutional operations are using today to conserve water resources and keep money in their checkbooks.

The various ways you can do this are detailed in a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The environmental group’s original goal when researching water conservation options was to deal with the effects of an ongoing drought in California.

But NRDC researchers quickly realized that companies ended up saving a lot of money — 25% to 50% — by investing in water reduction techniques, from installing high-efficiency toilets and fixtures to recycling wastewater on site.

Those that can take advantage include office buildings, hotels, oil refineries, golf courses, schools, universities, restaurants and manufacturers. Case studies reviewed by NRDC reveal that:

• commercial kitchens save up to $1,050 a year on energy and water bills by installing water-efficient dishwashers
• hotels that switch to water-efficient washing machines cut water usage by 38%
• smart irrigation systems reduce water needed for landscaping at office parks, business centers, schools and other non-industrial operations by 40% to 50%
• low-flow shower heads reduce water usage at hotels by 15%
• water meters and improved leak detection helped Fetzer Vineyard cut its annual water use by 24%
• on-site water treatment helped Intel cut water usage by 75% at its semiconductor plant in Arizona, and
• irrigating with recycled water and using drought-tolerant grasses saved the Desert Willow Golf Course $84,000 a year.

The report, Making Every Drop Work: Increasing Water Efficiency in California’s Commercial, Industrial and Institutional (CII) Sector, details how existing technology cuts water usage, saves money and conserves water resources. And these case studies reveal that these technologies can be used wherever water resources are dwindling as population expands.

Why aren’t more companies on the water conservation bandwagon? It takes work to line up the funding for conservation investments and to identify which rebate programs will work for an individual company. The low cost of subsidized water also makes it difficult for users to make the numbers work.

The NRDC press release is here.

The full report is here.

Tags: Desert Willow, Fetzer Vineyard, Intel, NRDC, water conservation, water efficiency