Most people don't see the relationship between carbon and water: Christophe Beck of Ecolab

Christophe Beck, Chairman and CEO, Ecolab

India accounts for 18 percent of the world population, but only four percent of the world’s water resources. Many parts of the country face water scarcity, with cities like Chennai and Bengaluru staring at a Day Zero crisis, a scenario in which public water supply stops completely and taps go dry.

This is a real problem for a fast-growing economy like India, but the country can leverage its technological prowess to find ways to manage, reuse and recycle its water, says Christophe Beck, chairman and CEO of Ecolab, which provides products and services in water, hygiene and sanitation, and energy. It caters primarily to large industrial customers across various sectors like chemicals, manufacturing, metals and mining, and food processing, and works with 725 customers across 3,700 locations in India. Ecolab in India, Beck says, has helped its customers annually treat around 208 billion litres of water.

The 100-year-old company headquartered in Minnesota, US, generated $15.5 billion in revenue last year, and has a market capitalisation of $70.3 billion, as per Forbes. India, along with Middle East and Africa, contributed to three percent of total sales for the company in 2023, but “in terms of technology, partnerships and acquisitions, India is a priority country”, says Beck. The company employs around 2,000 people in India, and will add another 1,000 people to its workforce here over the next few years, he adds.

In a conversation with Forbes India during his recent visit to the country, Beck spoke about Ecolab’s business plans in India, how they are working with companies here to reduce and reuse water, and the state of awareness about water and energy efficiency among businesses and regulators. Edited excerpts:

Q. What is the nature and extent of Ecolab’s operations in India?
We’ve been here for close to 40 years. Today, we have close to 2,000 people in India [7 percent of Ecolab’s global workforce], half of them dedicated to India and half of them for the rest of the world. We are adding another 1,000 people in the next few years to the centre in Pune, where we bring the best experts around the world in different fields, be it artificial intelligence (AI), engineering, or finance. In terms of technology, partnership and acquisitions, India is a priority country.

In the Global Intelligence Center in Pune, which we started 15 years ago, we follow the performance of 40,000 plants around the world from here in Pune. We collect a lot of data that we can learn from on how businesses are performing, and their impact on the environment. We serve a million customers around the world. Ecolab India has saved 27 billion litres of water, enough to meet the drinking needs of 24 million people for a year. This is equivalent to the annual drinking water requirements for the entire city of Mumbai.

Q. What are your priority sectors in India?
We started with large companies in India. Those are usually the customers we serve first because they understand what we’re doing. But today we are much more penetrated within the country. Three areas are going to be critical for us in the future. First is clean tech, which is energy transition. Second is high tech, which is semiconductor manufacturing that is emerging in the country, electronics and data centres. Third is biotech, and there are a lot of companies in this field in India.

Q. How many customers do you have here?
We have 725 customers across 3,700 locations in India. Some companies like Tata, we’ve been working for almost 40 years together. We started with them, in steel, electronics, power, chemicals, hotels. We work with Biocon in bioprocessing.

Q. Hasn’t Ecolab been helping Tata Steel make their processes more energy efficient?
Tata Steel has made a commitment to double their steel production, and do it in a way that is not using more water in absolute terms. We’ve developed that plan together with the Tata teams. We have been executing that plan together for a few years now. It’s also fascinating in the case of Jamshedpur. Ultimately, since the city of Jamshedpur and the [Tata Steel] mill are integrated with a million people over there, we could really turn that into a net-zero site. Ultimately, the water that is being used in the city can be used in the mill as well, which is an example of the rest of the country and the world.

Q. What are the unique challenges that India faces when it comes to water management?
The fact that India makes up for 18 percent of the world’s population and only four percent of freshwater reserve is a real issue, especially when you are growing fast. If you put all the freshwater available in the world in a bubble, that bubble would be 60 km wide, which is probably smaller than Mumbai. That’s all the freshwater we have for the whole world, and India has four percent of that bubble. It’s nothing. Every country is facing that, but with technology, we can make it work.

Q. What specific technologies can be made available in India in the short- and medium-term?
Our technology called 3D Trasar is, in simple words, connecting water to the cloud, where, in real-time, we can understand the quality, the properties of the water in the system, and understand what needs to be done to bring it back to a clean state. It helps you manage your water system in real time and reduce water consumption by 50 percent. We have an example of a laundry company in Chennai where we help them recycle 75 percent of their water and reduce 50 percent of their usage within a few months. Annual industrial water treated by Ecolab in India is at 208 billion litres.

Also read: Desperate Thirst: Climate change and recurrent water crisis plaguing West Bengal's Purulia district in India

Q. One of Ecolab’s studies in 2022 said that water scarcity is one of the biggest fears of Indians. What can a company like yours do towards solving for scarcity, access or quality of water in India?
At the core of what we do is to help companies, industries, hotels to reuse and recycle water instead of producing wastewater.

For 2,000 years or more, humans have taken water, processed water, dumped water, and hoped that nature will solve for scarcities because water will to go back to the clouds and come back as rain. But now Day Zeroes are becoming a reality. So we need to change the way we think about water—and do what nature does, which is reuse water—in industrial plants, dairy farms, hotels. We invest so much in technology that we can manage to recycle and reuse, not create wastewater, and keep growing. 

Q. How is the regulatory ecosystem in India for a company like yours?
It’s a challenge that we are facing. In most countries around the world, the regulator has a tendency to regulate the past versus regulating the future. When you think about technology, or AI, for instance, nobody really knows where it’s going. Nobody really knows how to regulate it. When we talk about circular water, regulations are made for the old systems where you have sewage water going to the wastewater treatment plant, and then the water is dumped on ground or in the rivers or lakes or the sea. The future is not going to be like that.

We should be supporting investments in technology to reuse water, and that’s a totally different regulatory framework. For example, it’s usually illegal in most places around the world to reuse water in food production. This is an old view of the world, because it’s the same water that’s going to come back to the plant at some point. It’s just nature doing it in the meantime. So having a regulatory framework that allows you, with the right technology, the right standards, to reuse the water within the plant should be allowed.

Q. Do you see awareness among businesses, governments and other stakeholders in India?
Very little, unfortunately. But the good news is that because all are focussed on climate and carbon footprint, and most do not see the relationship between carbon and water, the moment we talk about it, explain how they’re going to lose less energy by reusing water, and how it’s good for their cost, they are going to understand. The problem is most of them don’t know this [linkage] upfront, and regulation very often does not include water. It’s all focussed on carbon and energy, which is right, but adding water to your main driver to reduce carbon footprint and Day Zero risk is an opportunity we should not miss. Most governments miss it.

Q. Decoupling energy efficiency with growth and profitability has been an issue. How can companies in India, where scarcity of resources is stark, find that balance?
Approaching every industry in a circular way, through technology that exists today, will allow companies to keep growing while not depleting essential resources, not just for today but for the generations to come. Technology to decouple the two is a value creation opportunity for the country, because it’s using the great minds in India to develop new solutions, bring innovation to life, create new businesses.