Water efficiency as a competitive factor

Water is the resource that best illustrates the paradox of Italy’s transition: we know it well, we have always used it, and yet we continue to treat it as if it were infinite. Leaks in the distribution network, climate change, dwindling resources and increasingly frequent droughts show us that the era of emergency management is over. A structural shift is needed, and the resources now flowing into Italy – from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) to cohesion funds, right through to the incentives linked to the new Housing Plan – represent an opportunity we cannot afford to squander.

As the new president of Sustainability Makers (the association of sustainability professionals in business), but also as someone who works every day to make a ‘heavy’ sector such as steel more sustainable – where process water is recovered and reused in a closed-loop system – I can say that water circularity is not a theoretical exercise: it is a practice that is already available, which simply needs to be scaled up and consistently funded.

For businesses, the priority is to invest in water efficiency in the same way as they invest in energy efficiency: measuring consumption, identifying leaks, and designing systems that reuse water several times before discharging it. Industries should view water as an indicator of competitiveness, not merely of compliance: markets and the sustainable finance sector are already looking at these figures, and companies that ignore them risk falling behind in terms of access to credit and their relationships with suppliers.

For families, the housing plan represents a real opportunity. Every renovation and every new building project should incorporate rainwater harvesting systems, energy-saving devices for domestic use, and materials and technologies that reduce waste and energy loss. These are not merely symbolic gestures, but choices that have a direct impact on utility bills and on protecting our local areas in the face of increasingly frequent extreme weather events.

Then there is a third level: that of collective responsibility. The public and private sectors must work together. The incoming financial resources will not be enough unless they are accompanied by a long-term vision and the capacity to implement it – which, in Italia, remains the real bottleneck. I am thinking of leaky networks that have been awaiting repairs for decades, of fragmented water governance, and of a culture of reuse that is struggling to take hold outside the most advanced sectors.