Water Tech editor's compiled a list of questions and submitted them to Ecolab. Marc Enderle, director, commercial engineering, Europe, at Ecolab answered the questions and covered how industrial water is shifting from unit cost to a strategic growth asset.

Water Tech: Ecolab is positioning water as a "strategic growth asset rather than a unit cost." For an industrial operator who still books water as a utility line item, what's the first internal conversation that needs to change, and who needs to be in the room?

Marc Enderle: To transform water from a linear utility expense into a strategic growth asset, industrial operators must fundamentally reshape their internal dialogue from monitoring consumption volume to calculating total value-at-risk.

Historically, water has been treated as a plant-level utility shared between different departments without a strong understanding of its cost, which obscures how much enterprise value depends on reliable water access. Overcoming this structural blind spot requires breaking down traditional organizational silos and bringing a cross-functional leadership team into the room.

A truly resilient strategy requires the synchronized oversight of the Chief Financial Officer, the VP of Operations, and plant engineering leads to co-author a new boardroom mandate that connects water security directly to enterprise growth, production continuity, and corporate margin protection.

WT: The phrase "ambition to action" gets used a lot in 2026 water coverage. From your vantage point, what specifically is stalling action at the plant or facility level (CAPEX constraints, data gaps, regulatory uncertainty, or something else)?

ME: Moving from corporate ambition to operational action is rarely stalled by a lack of sustainability intent; rather, it is blocked by a critical execution failure known as the "Data-Action Gap".

While many modern industrial facilities are equipped to monitor and collect vast amounts of baseline resource data, they frequently lack the immediate visibility and insights required to translate raw data into real-time operational adjustments.

This operational friction is further aggravated when high-level corporate commitments fail to bridge the technical reality of daily facility operations and plant water cycle architecture. Without practical pathways that connect boardroom targets to plant-level processes, water goals stall as reports instead of becoming operational milestones.

WT: How is CDP reporting actually changing industrial water decisions versus just satisfying disclosure requirements? Can you point to a sector where benchmarking has moved the needle?

ME: Modern disclosure frameworks like those put forth by CDP are undergoing a significant evolutionary shift – moving away from retrospective compliance exercises and becoming active drivers of corporate risk mitigation.

Rather than merely satisfying reporting requirements, sophisticated benchmarking now forces organizations to map localized water stress directly to their long-term production capacity and regional permit security.

A clear example of this shift can be observed in highly regulated or water-stressed agricultural and dairy processing sectors. In these regions, rigorous benchmarking paired with effluent optimization and outcome-focused engineering has enabled facilities to secure critical production permits and expand operational capacity without incurring severe capital expenditure penalties or risking local regulatory shutdowns.

WT: Where do current benchmarks fall short for water-intensive industries (food & bev, semiconductors, data centers, pharma), and what would a more useful standard look like?

ME: Traditional industry benchmarks evaluate water in total isolation, looking at the water use of individual processes or application areas. This type of approach does not account for the complex operational interdependencies that define modern manufacturing. Water systems are not static – consumption varies based on water conditions, and productivity and efficiency can get impacted dramatically by scaling, fouling and other variables.

To look at all these elements together, companies must examine the water-energy-productivity nexus, examining how water plays an integral role in end-to-end processes, looking holistically at the entire water cycle. This type of framework looks at water’s interconnected relationship with energy and productivity, tracking how it can be optimized to support thermal efficiency, mitigate carbon emissions, and maximize total output quality—revealing the true economic and environmental footprint of the resource.

WT: What's a "hidden cost driver" most facility teams don't see?

ME: An invisible hidden cost driver is the massive energy penalty that can stem from unoptimized water infrastructure. Across heavy manufacturing and light industries alike, anywhere from 35% to 70% of a facility’s total energy profile is managed directly through its water systems. When flowing through an industrial process, water needs to get cooled, heated, moved and treated, all of which requires energy. Linear water treatment disposes of water without considering its connection to energy, treatment chemistry or other costs. Further, process water quality can impact energy performance and related costs. Scaling deposits, corrosion, and biological fouling can compromise efficiency and asset reliability. This hidden degradation can drive up energy use, utility expenses and greenhouse gas emissions. Alternatively, by improving water efficiency, companies can reduce energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions along with the associated cost.

To give a concrete example, Ecolab’s Nalco Water business implemented water optimization technology at a chemical processing plant in China, focused on improving efficiency, meeting regulatory requirements, enhancing productivity and conserving water and energy. By optimizing operations, the plant realized savings of 280,000 cubic meters of water and 6.2 million BTUs of energy, while avoiding 330 metric tons of CO₂e annually. The combined solution delivered significant cost savings for the company and helped them advance toward a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target of 35% by 2035 and climate neutrality by 2050.

WT: When you talk about "innovative, scalable solutions," what does scalable actually mean for a mid-sized industrial user that can't replicate a Fortune 100 program?

ME: For mid-sized industrial operators, scalability relies on the management of outcomes rather than individual water applications. By combining advanced chemical engineering with on-the-ground expertise and intelligence, Ecolab offers industries an integrated approach to water circularity, built on a deep understanding of the water cycle. This integrated approach allows us to identify efficiencies across operations and implement improvements programmatically, helping to optimize performance while mitigating significant infrastructure overhauls.

WT: What's the most underestimated financial return from a water optimization project?

ME: While immediate reductions in water bills are easily quantified, the most significantly underestimated financial returns of a water optimization project are its longer term impact on license to operate as well as the future cost of water intake and discharge.

By mitigating effluent compliance risks and meeting local discharge criteria, facilities protect themselves against localized water scarcity limits and regulatory fines that can dramatically impact operational costs. Furthermore, facilities can protect their license to operate by driving towards quantifiable sustainability benefits.

WT: How should an operations leader pitch a water-as-asset investment to a CFO?

ME: When pitching a water circularity investment to a CFO, an operations leader must shift purely environmental rhetoric to a business case that demonstrates water as a strategic shield for corporate margins. These conversations should clearly demonstrate how projects will de-couple production volume from localized resource constraints, helping to protect future revenue from water scarcity and regulatory volatility.

By framing the investment around the optimization of the water-energy-productivity nexus and grounding it in the context of future costs rather than current state alone, the pitch can outline quantifiable reductions in operational expenses and detail clear value that protects the company's long-term competitive advantage.

WT: Twelve months from now, what does "action" look like if the industry actually delivers on the rhetoric coming out of Global Water Summit?

ME: Action will be characterized by the widespread adoption of standardized circular blueprints across the industrial sector. In an ideal scenario, industries will move past isolated, localized pilot projects and embrace systemic, enterprise-wide water recycling as a baseline requirement for doing business. Operational success will rely on insights and intelligence to optimize resource management, effectively minimizing wastewater discharge and transforming water transition goals into verified balance-sheet achievements.

WT: What's one thing Ecolab is doing differently in 2026 that you wish more of your industrial customers would adopt?

ME: Water circularity has always been a focus, but water’s impact on production processes can go overlooked. Ecolab is focused on managing water as a strategic asset, recognizing that water’s performance relies on optimization across multiple interdependent processes. We are intentionally breaking down the traditional silos that have historically forced facilities to manage these critical utilities independently. Our primary strategic goal is for our industrial partners to move away from treating water as a series of isolated, transactional problems and treat water circularity as a viable path towards industrial productivity and sustainable economic growth.