Water, Air and Pentair: Supporting World Environment Day
by Marybeth Thorsgaard, Pentair Vice President of Communications and President of the Pentair Foundation
As published on the Pentair Blog
Today is World Environment Day, an opportunity every June to celebrate and support environmental action.
Established by the United Nations in 1974, World Environment Day is supported by more than 100 countries. Every year, a timely theme is carefully chosen to resonate with one of the world’s most urgent environmental challenges. In turn, a host country takes on the task of highlighting the challenge and the ways they’re working to help solve it.
The focus of this year’s event, hosted by China, is air pollution—from the industrial smokestacks that may come to mind to much more subtle contributors, our everyday decisions can make an impact.
At Pentair, even as our focus remains on clean, safe and sustainable water, we’re taking time on World Environment Day 2019 to reflect on how water and air pollution can be interconnected.
Earlier this year, we were recognized with the ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year – Sustained Excellence Award for the sixth consecutive year for our commitment to energy efficiency in our line of industry-leading pool pumps.
While our pool pumps have saved consumers $1.9 billion in operating costs since 2007, they’ve had an impact on air as well. In that same time period, our pool pumps prevented the release of 14.0 million tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of 31.1 billion car-driven miles.*
But there’s another way water and air come together even more directly at Pentair: carbonated beverages. These popular drinks owe their crisp, refreshing fizz to carbon dioxide, one of the most prevalent air-polluting greenhouse gases as measured by total emissions.**
In a world’s first, Pentair Union Engineering is working with partners in Europe to pull greenhouse gas directly from the air for use in carbonated beverages.
In fact, Pentair’s beverage-producing customers are among the world’s largest consumers of carbon dioxide, making this new technology the perfect combination of our passions for water and sustainability. A match nearly as perfect as bubbles and your favorite soft drink.
We hope you join us in supporting World Environment Day by continuing to look for innovative ways to #BeatAirPollution.
*Source: EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator
**Source: EPA Greenhouse Gas Emissions Overview
