Sustainability in Wastewater Management

Businesses don’t always consider sustainability when installing or maintaining their equipment wash systems.  Equipment wash bays and the associated operations can wind up being viewed as a plain expense without the benefits of other more glamorous investments.

Sustainability in your business is built by planning, execution and adapting to change.  Failing to plan is planning to fail.  A plan is only as good as it’s execution.  Nobody is getting rich selling VHS video tapes. 

When we dig deeper into our businesses, the individual parts of the organization require planning, execution and adaptability just like the whole or we begin to sacrifice sustainability of the overall business. 

How Can My Equipment Wash System Hurt Sustainability?

• Planning.  It is critical that maintenance and other associated costs are something you can plan and budget.  A wash system that is not designed for current demands or to meet current regulatory requirements will result in extraordinary unplanned costs.  To the extreme a problem with environmental compliance can have a huge negative impact on your overall business plan.

• Execution.  Reliable wash system and water treatment performance is necessary for your operation to do their job.  Production schedules and quality will nearly always be adversely affected by down time from the wash system.  You will not be able to clean equipment on schedule, your waste stream will not be treated properly or both. 

• Adapting To Change. Many businesses have changing waste streams and water filtration needs over time.  You may have seasonal or job-related cycles where your water treatment system must be able to adapt to varying waste stream demands.  Solids content in the wash water may require different filtration capability to produce reusable water.  The same is true for chemical components in the water.  Maintaining reusable water will require adapting your cleaning and treating agents to properly manage wash water for ongoing use. 

All of the wash system sustainability principles described in the bullets above are interrelated. 

• System design and planning affects execution
• Wash system reliability affects the ability to plan and budget
• A system that is not flexible to meet changing requirements will affect reliability and execution
• Environmental non-compliance in waste streams can affect production and planning

Round and round the sustainable wheel turns. 

How Can My Wastewater Management Improve Sustainability?

• Planning.  Properly designing your wash system with integrated waste stream management is critical to long term reliability and performance.  By designing the wash and water treatment facilities as a wholistic system, you will optimize reliability and predictability of performance for your business plans.  A common example is designing a closed loop water treatment system assuring you have reusable wash water to minimize water costs and effluent waste while maximizing reliability with good reusable water.

• Execution.  Preventive and predictive maintenance is a key to optimizing execution of your plans for the wash system.  With a properly designed system, you will have predictable equipment performance so can have a planned maintenance schedule that you control within the needs of your business.  Having available parts and technical support is important for supporting pro-active maintenance execution.

• Adapting to Change.  A well-engineered wash system design will provide the ability to adapt for changing conditions.  It is important to have a competent wash system technical support team to help you recognize when changing conditions may require adjustments to the way you operate your system or modify components.  The nature of your waste stream may change requiring adjustments to water filtration elements.  Top priority has to be keeping the wash system operating in a planned and reliable way to support effective execution of your sustainable business plans. 

You can see how the fundamentals of business sustainability apply to your wastewater management system and wash equipment.  The various elements of planning, execution and adapting to change should be incorporated into your equipment wash system strategy to support your more broad company goals of sustainable growth and health for the business.