Nearly 1.8 billion people – or about 25 percent of the world’s population – don’t have access to safe drinking water, and an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages by 2025. In India, more than 81 percent of adults, well over the global average, say they have changed their behavior as a result of water concerns, according to research conducted for Ford Motor Company as part of the Ford 2017 Trend Report.
Ford has been changing too in order to address the need to conserve water – and is moving ever closer to its goal of using zero drinking water in the car-making process. In 2016, Ford Asia Pacific used 15 percent less water to produce each vehicle compared to 2015. That’s enough to fill two bathtubs or 1,000 half-liter bottles of drinking water. Overall, the company has halved its water usage per vehicle in the region over the past seven years.
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Ford has saved 10 billion gallons of water from 2000 to 2015, a decrease of 61 percent – enough to fill over 15,000 competition-sized swimming pools. By 2020, Ford has targeted a water usage reduction of 72 percent when compared to 2000. That roughly means for every one gallon of water Ford used in manufacturing in 2000, it aims to use about one liter by 2020.
In India, Ford’s plants in Chennai have achieved zero liquid discharge and have also installed equipment to harvest rain water to further reduce the use of drinking water. 3,000 cubic meters of rainwater was harvested for use in 2016. At Ford’s Sanand Vehicle Assembly and Engine Plant, 100 percent of treated water is recycled and reused within the plant property. Ford’s partnership with the Rotary Club and the Environmentalist Foundation of India included project funding of more than USD 70,000 over the past three years, to help protect water storage and management systems damaged by heavy flooding in Chennai.
Ford has been recognized by several third-party organizations for its efforts in sustainability, including:
- 2017 World’s Most Admired Company by Fortune
- 2016 The Just 100: America’s Best Corporate Citizens by Forbes
- 2016 America’s Best Employer by Forbes
- 2016 Top Green Company by Newsweek
- 2016 World’s Most Attractive Employer for Engineering and IT by Universum
- 2016 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index