Water cycle in industry
The vast majority of industrial companies require water and depend on this resource. Achieving the requisite water quality often involves special treatment. Industrial companies consume part of the water abstracted, while the remaining (unused) portion is discharged as industrial effluent. These effluents must be treated before they can be released back into the natural environment. This treatment is done either on site (via the installation of an industrial wastewater treatment plant) or by the local authority following connection to the domestic water network.
At the time of global warming, water scarcity and associated use-related conflicts, industrial companies must adapt at pace in order to safeguard their activities while complying with drought decrees, which limit the amount of water that can be abstracted.
Regulations and financial support programmes incentivise the adoption of good practices, the use of the best available technologies and the development of innovative solutions for reducing, recycling and reusing water on site, including rainwater.
Finally, the success of ambitious projects is often a team effort. For this reason, Industrial and Regional Ecology initiatives are growing. These projects aim to bring together stakeholders for the river basin in which the industrial site is located, in order to find the best possible technologies from an environmental and technical/economic perspective.