How we’re acting to reduce water waste

This is no small task for an organisation like ours. Innovation is often a resource-intensive endeavour and, like most organisations, our focus in the past has been to minimise cost, rather than our environmental impact, with utilities like heat and water viewed as a ​‘thing that’s there when we need it’ rather than a resource to manage. 

Today, we want to continue our mission of driving forward innovation – just in a more sustainable way. That requires us to scrutinise – and wherever possible aim to minimise – our use of resources.

A precious resource going down the drain

Among the most important resources for us to scrutinise is our use of water. 

According to UNICEF, almost two-thirds of the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity for at least 1 month a year, and water scarcity is expected to intensify in the coming decades. We’ve been fortunate in the UK; we’ve never had to seriously worry about the possibility of turning on the tap and nothing coming out – so it’s easy to think of clean water as something that ​‘just happens’. 

This was reflected in how we traditionally operated, with none of our plants having effective water metering. If our plants did have water meters, they weren’t connected to the internet, requiring someone to go out and read them – which often fell down the priority list in a busy research environment. 

Cultural shifts, technology and processes

Complacency around water use is the first of three challenges, centred around our people, our sites and our processes. 

Reducing water use requires a cultural shift – where our teams recognise water as a precious resource. Only when our people have internalised that, and committed to more efficient water use as one of our priorities, can steps be taken to make that happen. 

We also need to roll out the required technology to allow us to monitor water use. This means fitting internet-connected water meters so we can collect and analyse usage data. Lately, we’ve been busy working on this, partnering with Demeter Water Solutions to install portable flow meters and smart meters in the pipework of our plants so that water use can be monitored in real-time. 

But, having that data is little use unless it leads to action, hence ​‘processes’. This refers to everything that happens after a meter reading is taken: an expert having the daily responsibility of looking at the data, analysing it and making decisions based on the story they find in it. 

Patterns and spikes

One of our early focuses is using water meters to investigate spikes in usage. For instance, we recently installed a water meter in one of our Sedgefield facilities to help reduce water waste there. The team noticed a significant spike in water use over the weekend and sent engineers to investigate. The root cause was a burst pipe, which, if left unattended, could have caused significant damage to facilities and equipment. 

Beyond these emergency situations, water meters allow us to identify patterns that can help reduce water wastage across our sites. Using metering at our building in Darlington, the team noticed higher-than-expected water usage. Leaking cisterns were identified as one culprit – replacing these could save around 3,500m³ of water annually. 

An engineer also identified high water wastage when making high-purity water – an essential process for cell culture, DNA sequencing and much more. A typical reverse osmosis plant uses 3 to 4 litres of domestic water to produce high-purity water. We’re now investigating how we can recover this wastewater and recycle it for use onsite – which would save around 8,800m³ of water each year. 

Steps towards sustainability

We cannot pretend to have been leaders in reducing water waste – just 18 months ago, we would not have had the equipment and expertise in place to detect and analyse spikes in our water use. However, we are proud to be early adopters, using the latest digital technology to help us manage our resources better. 

This is just one of the measures we are taking in our wider mission to make our own operations more sustainably in alignment with our commitments as a member of the UN Global Compact. That way, we can continue driving groundbreaking innovation for generations to come.