The theme for World Water Day 2019 is ‘Leaving no one behind’. This is an adaptation of the central promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: as sustainable development progresses, everyone must benefit.

Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) includes a target to ensure availability and sustainable management of water for all by 2030. By definition, this means leaving no one behind.

Today, billions of people are still living without safe water – their households, schools, workplaces, farms and factories struggling to survive and thrive.

Marginalized groups – women, children, refugees, indigenous peoples, disabled people and many others – are often overlooked, and sometimes face discrimination, as they try to access and manage the safe water they need.

What can we do as a business?

When most businesses think about environmental sustainability practices, water conservation isn’t always the first to spring to mind. But it should be.

Water is a scarce resource which we take for granted every day. While 70 percent of the earth’s surface is water, only 2.5 percent of this water is fresh water. If we continue down this same path, scientists predict worldwide water shortages will become increasingly prevalent.

Here’s the good news: like many sustainability measures, simple changes can make a significant impact on daily water usage. Every business uses water in different ways and some use a lot more water than others, but even making a small change, like installing low-flush toilets, can help our business conserve water.

Much of the water that’s wasted by businesses is “lost” through inefficiencies, so this year we are inviting our people to put forward their thoughts on how we can, as a business, be more efficient. To think about what small changes we can make to our daily water usage to be more sustainable.