When treatment systems recycle wastewater into clean water, cities like Lima, Peru, are able to safely irrigate nearly 1,000 acres of farmland per day. This is a prime example of how one of BCLC’s 2009 Corporate Stewardship Award finalists addresses a pressing global issue: water scarcity. 

ITT is a high-technology engineering and manufacturing company that specializes in water and fluids management,  global defense and security, and motion and flow control.  It is also a company helping to bring safe water, sanitation, and hygiene education to more than 300 schools in Asia and Latin America – improving the lives of more than 100,000 children and their families.

ITT is committed to safeguarding the climate, communities, and resources while also focusing on sustainable growth and development. Additional ways the company took on the water challenge in 2008 included:

* Supported 52 schools in Latin America and Asia with safe water, sanitation and hygiene, directly impacting

A council meeting to plan a new well and its management

more than 36,000 students.

* Provided safe water to more than 190,000 people following emergencies.

* Sent the first wave of ITT volunteers to Honduras and Guatemala in April 2009 to work alongside Water For People’s team of World Water Corps workers to evaluate water availability, sanitation conditions and hygiene practices, take photographs, collect water samples, and interview students and community members in towns needing assistance

* Expanded ITT Watermark into mainland China through a partnership with the China Women’s Development Foundation (CWDF) to provide eight rural schools with safe drinking water, new sanitation facilities and education on water safety, environmental protection and hygiene.

* Elsewhere in China, ITT employees are already providing science and water hygiene classes for students and distributing water-related products, such as soap and towels.

Additionally, ITT is:

* Recycling water, toilet to tap: Cloudcroft, New Mexico, will soon use ITT technology to recycle every drop of water that goes down the pipes. The “used” water will be cleaned by ITT water reuse technologies and returned to the community for dishwashing, clothes washing, irrigation, street cleaning and even drinking. When it comes online, the system will process nearly 100,000 gallons of wastewater daily, without a drop going to waste.

*Saving money while saving water: Like a smart grid, our “smart pumps” can lower energy costs by as much as 65 percent by matching water intake and output to demand.

Water conservation and safety is not ITT’s only stewardship focus — see the company’s 2009 Corporate Stewardship nomination page to learn about efforts to reduce emissions and to empower one of its strategic nonprofit partners, MercyCorps.