World Water Day, Every Day

Doing More, With Less: Conserving Water Across Our Company

Saving water is an important priority for everyone at Abbott – to ensure clean, fresh water for the future, and to save costs and resources today. We've set an ambitious goal to reduce our water intake by 30 percent by 2020, and we're taking innovative approaches across the company to make it happen. We've made good progress against this goal, reducing our water intake by 18 percent through 2016 (compared to 2010 levels and adjusted for sales).  A few examples of our work:

• At our vascular facility in Santa Clara, California, a water conservation project supplies reclaimed water from manufacturing processes to the site's cooling towers and irrigation system. This project recycles 10 million gallons of water and reduces fresh water consumption by 60 percent.
• A project to recirculate cooling water and prevent unnecessary water use at our nutrition facility in Cootehill, Ireland, reduced water use by 18 percent, the equivalent of 634 gallons of water per ton of product produced.
• Water efficiency projects, including a new cleaning process for manufacturing tanks and equipment, were implemented at our established pharmaceuticals facility in Tlalpan, Mexico. These projects reduced water intake by 1.5 million gallons per year.

Helping Communities Save Water

Building on efforts across our sites, we also work with local communities to help conserve water. In the U.S. state of Arizona, we're helping to create a culture of water conservation in local communities near our nutrition plant in Casa Grande. Working with Project WET and with support from the Abbott Fund, Abbott experts share best practices in saving water with local small businesses, homeowners and schools, and expand education programs for students. To date, we've helped the local community save 11 million gallons of water.

For more information on World Water Day, visit the United Nations webpage: www.worldwaterday.org

For more examples of how Abbott is saving water, and our broader work to protect the environment, click here.