The Water Council offers an array of water stewardship programs and services, from out-of-the-box solutions to tailored advisory assistance to training, to help businesses and professionals begin and accelerate their water stewardship journeys. We are committed to cultivating responsible stewardship of the world’s freshwater resources.

WAVE

Throughout 2021, The Water Council developed WAVE: Water Stewardship Verified, our corporate water stewardship program to help companies improve water stewardship performance and credibly tell their water stewardship story, with informal advisement from Impax Asset Management and Sustainalytics. Through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s six-week National Science Foundation Innovation Corps program, we interviewed more than 50 stakeholders about their water stewardship needs and refined our offering in anticipation of a 2022 launch. We also piloted the program with four companies – A. O. Smith Corporation, Badger Meter, Nutrien and Watts Water Technologies. Finally, we reached an agreement with SCS Global Services, a global leader in third-party verification of sustainability claims, to provide independent verification of WAVE participants.

Advisory Services & Collaboration

The Water Council conducted advisory water stewardship services for several clients this year, including two large European companies in the pharmaceutical and bio-agriculture sectors to help them better understand local water risk in North America. We also worked with the American Chemistry Council to develop a water risk assessment process for their members and piloted it with 12 of its members. We kicked off a multi-stakeholder water stewardship project in Manitoba with four corporate partners – General Mills, Nutrien, J.R. Simplot Co. and BASF – and another nonprofit, ALUS Canada, focused on the agricultural supply chain. The Lake Winnipeg Water Stewardship Project aims to improve water quality and quantity in southern Manitoba by altering land, water and nutrient management on Manitoba farms. We also signed a memorandum of understanding with Riverwater Partners, a Milwaukee-based ESG investment firm, to promote water stewardship within the ESG community and portfolio companies. Finally, we supported the development of a graduate-level water stewardship course at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that was approved as part of a recurring curriculum to be offered for the first time in 2022.

Alliance for Water Stewardship

In 2021, we completed our multi-year agreement to build and launch the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) System in North America. We delivered AWS Standard System Training to 65 individuals, ensured certification quality control in North America, transferred operation of the AWS professional credentialing system to AWS headquarters and worked with the following companies to achieve AWS Standard site certification: