Vodacom unveiled its rainwater-harvesting project at its head office in Midrand yesterday.
The project is the largest in SA and comes in response to the City of Johannesburg's growth and development strategy on water. According to Thembani Jwambi, executive head of facilities at Vodacom, the aim of the project is to reduce Vodacom's reliance on municipal water, saving on utility bills and aiding general water conservation efforts.
"We believe we have a responsibility to reduce our water footprint; this is why we decided to investigate what procedures we could put in place to reduce our water usage," said Maya Makanjee, Vodacom's chief officer of corporate affairs. According to Makanjee, forecasts estimate that, over the next 30 years, we will need 52% more water than we have today, which means people need to be thinking about saving water.
The rainwater will be harvested in a storage dam at the brand's Midrand campus. The dam has a storage capacity of one million litres, or one mega-litre, and it expects to harvest about 12 million litres on average each year. According to Vodacom, the water will be used to cool down the air-conditioning system at the Vodacom Commercial Park building, in addition to irrigating the gardens on the Vodacom campus.
Makanjee highlighted the need for companies to be innovative in developing solutions that address critical social and environmental challenges. "Corporates can and do make a difference, even in the small initiatives they implement."
As part of the brand's drive to conserve water, Vodacom has also replaced water features and ponds with "water-wise gardens", and wastewater from the building's air-conditioning system is now being reused to water these gardens.
The initiative has received support from the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs and was launched on the same day as government's War on Leaks project. According to Rejoice Mabudafhasi, deputy minister of water and environmental affairs, 30 local youths were trained and appointed as Water Conservation Warriors and were challenged to promote water conservation awareness programmes.
According to Makanjee, the water scarcity problem is everyone's problem and requires all of us to come together to make a difference. "Vodacom has begun taking steps in this direction and hopes to be setting a trend in rainwater harvesting," Makanjee concluded. "We believe projects like rain harvesting are going to make a huge difference as they provide eco-friendly, reliable and cost-effective solutions for homeowners as well as businesses."
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