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With Water Scarce, Conservation Gets A Business Case

It wasn't until relatively recently that theories of conservation and ecology received any play in business, largely because for most of our history natural resources have neither been particularly scarce nor, raw materials aside, relative easy to...

It wasn’t until relatively recently that theories of conservation and ecology received any play in business, largely because for most of our history natural resources have neither been particularly scarce nor, raw materials aside, relative easy to appraise. Before Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire, industry wasn’t particularly concerned about the potential ecological costs of destroying a river system with dumped waste because it didn’t directly affect any bottom lines.

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Examples of business not calculating the cost of the environment and what it provides are endless, and without near-term impact (like a customer base calling for "green" good) there’s no real reason for it to. But with seven billion people on the planet, the increased scarcity of natural resources is beginning to have an impact. The first resource to go scarce? Water.

The New York Times just published an interesting story about Levi Strauss trying to cut the amount of water used in the production of their jeans. While Levi’s has previously produced things like expensive organic jeans that are more aimed at a feel-good customer base than being environmentally friendly, water shortages in the developing countries that grow Levi’s cotton have gotten the company worried. It is now pushing a nonprofit program to teach farmers new irrigation and rainwater-capture techniques to help secure its future cotton supply.

It’s applied conservation because it makes actual business sense. Levi’s is hardly the only company worried about water. From the Times:

Conservation worries are not limited to the clothing giants: food and beverage conglomerates, tobacco companies and metal and mining companies are all starting to reckon with their heavy dependence on water. Pepsico, for example, has embraced a method of sanitizing plastic bottles with purified air instead of water at a plant in Georgia. For its Frito-Lay brands, it has identified drought-resistant potato strains that it provides to farmers along with a soil-monitoring method so that crops are watered only when necessary.

This increasing interest in practical ecology—studies aimed at solving specific problems, sometimes sponsored by business—is reflected in scientific journals. Jonathan Majer, writing in Australia’s Austral Ecology, earlier this year published a review of 40 years of that journal’s articles. He found that research has increasingly moved towards dealing with today’s problems, like effects of industrial waste on river systems, rather than refining theories based on pristine systems. He writes:

Having spent 40 years researching insects in largely pristine habitats, I cannot help noticing that the majority of ecologists I meet are increasingly directing their research towards the numerous declines in the quality of our environment that the ever-expanding human population has caused.

The trend towards increasingly-practical, rather than esoteric or theoretical, research raises a lot of questions, especially in regards to a potential future where science research becomes nothing more than another cost-analysis tool for corporations. But more importantly, if resources like water are becoming scarce enough that businesses are spending a lot of cash to lessen their dependence on it, is it too late for conservation itself? Furthermore, if Levi’s says a pair of blue jeans consumes 919 gallons of water over its life, wouldn’t it save more water to buy fewer pants?

There’s an inherent contradiction between business, fueled by consumption, and conservation. While the jury’s still out on whether or not we’ve passed some point of no return, I suppose we can all take solace in the fact that, as we all learn to deal with less, business is learning too.