Clean Water and Sanitation

Access to water and sanitation is a human right that has yet to be realized for billions of people. Furthermore, around two billion people worldwide do not have regular access to clean water. About 771 million people do not even have a basic supply of drinking water.

According to a 2021 UNICEF survey, more than 1.42 billion people worldwide live in areas with overall high or extremely high water insecurity, including 450 million children.

48 percent of wastewater flows untreated into rivers and oceans.

• A good water supply is an extremely important requirement for our production. We use water as sparingly as possible and are constantly working towards reducing our emissions into bodies of water. We use water mainly for cooling, as process water in production, and to generate steam our power plants. We therefore regularly analyze the short-, medium-, and long-term availability of water at our sites.

• In agriculture, amino acids from Evonik, used in animal nutrition, help reduce water consumption.
• Environmentally friendly laundry, cleaning, and disinfection products from Evonik are completely biodegradable and have a very good ecological profile.
• Hydrogen peroxide and peracetic acid play an increasingly important role as environmentally friendly alternatives in combating pathogenic organisms in wastewater. This is an environmentally friendly solutions, because the only byproducts of these two peroxides are water and acetic acid, which is readily biodegradable..

• In the reporting period, we set a new target for water: Between 2021 and 2030, we aim to reduce specific freshwater intake relative to production volume by 3 percent.