Setting Higher Standards
Sloan is the only manufacturing facility in the world to achieve Alliance for Water Stewardship certification.
Water stewardship practices are just one of many ways that Sloan continues to demonstrate its commitment to community and the environment.
The Alliance for Water Stewardship
AWS International Water Stewardship Standard (AWS Standard) is a globally applicable framework for major water users to understand their water use and its impact and to work collaboratively and transparently for sustainable water management within a catchment context. The Standard is intended to drive social, environmental, and economic benefits at the scale of a catchment.
Learn more
Water challenges
AWS engages water-using sites in understanding and addressing shared catchment water challenges as well as site water risks and opportunities. It asks water-using sites to address these challenges in a way that progressively moves them to best practice in terms of five outcomes:
Good water
governance
Sustainable water
balance
Good water
quality status
Important water-
related areas
Safe water, sanitation,
and hygiene for all
Our process to AWS certification
Collaborating with local institutions
Certification demonstrates that a site has successfully completed each of the steps in the AWS Standard. Certificate holders tell us that achieving AWS certification brings demonstrable benefits regarding relationships with customers, increased investor confidence, strengthened social license to operate, brand perception, and dialogue with regulators and policymakers.
Meeting the challenge
With the help of SCS Global Services, we defined 3 shared water challenges for Sloan’s AWS certification.
Challenge 1
Increase outreach efforts and transparency to help educate the public and our customers on good water stewardship.
Our solution
- We educated thousands of our stakeholders through CEU classes across the country to inform them about the importance of water efficiency and water quality.
- We utilize our Mobile Showroom to bring water stewardship to our customers around the country.
- Sloan’s Vice President of Sustainability, Paul Sambanis, leads a college-level course at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he teaches on Sustainability and Resilience. His volunteer efforts include outreach on Green Building and Environmental Justice.
Challenge 2
Improve water efficiency by reducing factory potable water demand, leading to more water available for internal alternate use.
Our solution
- Our operations team overhauled our wastewater treatment plant to greatly reduce freshwater consumption in the process.
- All of our R&D labs utilize water re-use systems for testing plumbing fixtures and fittings.
Challenge 3
Participate in activities and work with local stakeholders to preserve and improve local water quality.
Our solution
- Sloan supports the Friends of the Chicago River to improve the river's water quality.
- Ongoing work with The Nature Conservancy to identify local projects to improve water quality.
Results
Sustainability at our core
Core certification
Sloan is proud to be a global leader in water stewardship meeting AWS Core certification. Sloan is the only manufacturer in the commercial restroom space to have AWS certification.
Being good stewards
The AWS process allowed Sloan to meet other water stewardship professionals from across the region and educate local government officials about the Standard and its importance. Sloan toured several important water-related areas which are local water features that, if impaired or lost, would adversely impact the environmental, social, cultural, or economic benefits of our local water resources.
“We worked with SCS Global Services who consulted us on our AWS journey. They provided insight as we developed the required documentation to meet the criteria within the AWS standard. Sloan’s culture of water efficiency and stewardship provided a great base for our certification.”
Paul Sambanis, PhD
Vice President of Sustainability
Continued efforts
Maintaining our commitment to AWS
The Alliance for Water Stewardship is committed to measuring sustainability efforts by certified entities at the site, catchment, and organizational levels to evaluate its environmental, social, cultural, and economic impacts.
AWS has set about developing its Monitoring & Evaluation System to see how we are doing against our own mission objectives and to begin to understand and learn about the impacts we are having in the world.
Sloan is committed to maintaining AWS certification for generations to come.