Water, Water Everywhere
And how Saint-Gobain plans to use 90 percent less of it

By Ellen O’Connor Special to the Worcester Business Journal 09/28/09
Joseph Durfresne, senior environmental engineer at Saint-Gobain in Worcester, says the company’s Worcester operations will use only 20 million gallons of water next year. The work that goes on at the various business units on the Saint-Gobain Worcester campus involves the application of heat — lots of it — which means gallons, nearly 123 million gallons per year, of water must be used to cool down equipment.But over the past two years, Saint-Gobain has made a concerted effort to reduce its dependency upon well water and has achieved a remarkable 79 percent reduction in its annual usage of water. In 2008, Saint-Gobain used 25.5 million gallons of water, down from 122.9 million gallons the previous year. It is a yearly reduction in usage that actually would have been greater had the new changes been in place for the entirety of 2008, said Joseph Dufresne, senior environmental engineer at Saint-Gobain.

via Water, Water Everywhere | Worcester Business Journal.