Dispatches in Decarbonization: Why Water and Waste Are Central to Net Zero Success
This article first appeared in Mahesh Ramanujam’s monthly LinkedIn newsletter, Dispatches in Decarbonization, on August 6, 2026. Subscribe on LinkedIn to receive these updates.
For years, net zero has largely been defined through the lens of carbon and energy. These remain essential priorities, but they are only part of the picture. Water and waste also influence emissions, resilience, operating costs, and long-term sustainability in ways that organizations can no longer afford to overlook.
Organizations won't solve every sustainability challenge overnight, nor should they be expected to. Some begin by understanding their emissions. Others focus first on energy performance, water stewardship, or waste reduction. What matters is taking measurable steps forward while recognizing that these systems are ultimately interconnected. The future of net zero is not about optimizing a single metric — it's about managing resources more intelligently.
Water must be pumped, treated, heated, and distributed, requiring energy at every stage. The products and materials we use carry histories of extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and disposal. What we throw away often includes materials, energy, water, labor, and economic value that could have been recovered.
Looking at these systems together changes our understanding of net zero. It opens the door to something more ambitious: buildings and organizations that use resources wisely, withstand disruption, contribute more to their communities than they take, and future-proof their operations.
For me, water is especially personal. I was born in Chennai, India, where water scarcity has long affected public health, economic opportunity, community stability, and daily life. In 2019, the city came perilously close to “Day Zero,” as depleted reservoirs left millions of residents facing severe disruption. Experiences like that make it difficult to treat water as simply another sustainability metric. They reinforce my belief that while carbon remains one of our most important climate metrics, it can’t be the only lens through which we define progress.
That belief shaped a recent Global Network for Zero webinar, “Beyond Carbon: Why Water and Waste Are Central to Net Zero Success.” The conversation brought together industry leaders including Eric Corey Freed of CannonDesign, Jesse Rittenhouse of SOCOTEC, Megan White of Firecrown, Kristen Fritsch of Elkus Manfredi Architects, Maria Perez of Gensler, and Matt Grocoff of THRIVE Collaborative.
Although each speaker approached the topic from different disciplines, we kept returning to the same conclusion: Our understanding of net zero has become too fragmented.
One organization might focus on operational energy while another prioritizes embodied carbon or waste-related emissions. All of that work matters, but problems arise when stakeholders evaluate progress without consistent boundaries or a clear explanation of what has – and has not – been measured.
Not every organization can address every impact at once. They can, however, be transparent about the full picture. Comprehensive accounting should include emissions and energy consumption, water entering and leaving a building, materials moving through its operations, and waste generated throughout its life cycle. Organizations should clearly identify what they measure, what they exclude, and why. Transparency buildings credibility, and credibility creates a meaningful place to begin.
For years, the building industry approached water primarily through individual efficiency measures and certification credits. Owners and operators installed low-flow fixtures, reduced irrigation, and compared the results with a baseline. While those measures remain worthwhile, they no longer represent the leadership the market needs.
Today’s water stewardship asks more difficult questions. How much water enters a building? Where does it come from? Does every use require drinking-quality water? Can the same water be used more than once? What happens when it leaves the site? How might climate change, population growth, infrastructure constraints, or rising costs affect its future availability?
Projects are beginning to answer these questions through water mapping, rainwater harvesting, graywater reuse, condensate recovery, leak detection, and district-scale systems. Much of the water consumed by a building does not need to meet drinking-water standards. Yet we spend energy and money treating it to that level before using it to flush toilets or irrigate landscapes. A better system would match water quality to its purpose and reuse water whenever possible.
As Eric Corey Freed, AIA, LEED Fellow noted during our discussion, we are not creating new freshwater resources. Every gallon conserved, reused, or managed more intelligently strengthens both environmental performance and long-term resilience.
Waste deserves the same scrutiny. What if waste is not simply something we discard, but one of the clearest measures of how efficiently we use the planet’s resources?
Every discarded product arrives at the end of a resource-intensive process. Raw materials were extracted, processed, manufactured, packaged, transported, and used. Energy and water were consumed, and emissions were generated at every stage.
This is why diversion rates tell only part of the story. A building that generates 1,000 tons of waste and diverts 90% still places a greater burden on resources than one that generates 200 tons and diverts 80%. Diversion matters, but preventing waste matters even more.
The industry already measures whole-life carbon. We should bring the same thinking to waste and water.
Several examples from our webinar demonstrated what this broader approach can achieve.
Megan White discussed her previous work on Google’s Bay View and Gradient Canopy campuses. Bay View uses engineered wetlands to treat wastewater on-site. The system reduced process-water demand by approximately 90% and associated energy use by 40%. It also restored habitat, supported biodiversity, and created natural spaces for the people using the campus.
Gradient Canopy provided a different lesson. The project team wanted to incorporate salvaged materials, but its circularity goals were established after design had begun. By then, the material palette did not easily accommodate reclaimed products. Circularity works best when it shapes a project from the beginning. Material reuse, water recovery, and waste prevention must influence the goals, budget, procurement strategy, and design requirements rather than being introduced after major decisions have been made.
Kristen Fritsch, AIA, LEED Fellow, WELL AP shared an example that challenged the conventional way we calculate water’s value. A project team evaluated a rainwater-capture system using current utility prices and initially estimated a payback period of more than 100 years. When the team considered projected water-rate increases and avoided infrastructure costs, the estimated payback fell to approximately seven years.
A solution can look very different once the analysis reflects the true costs and risks involved. Water can appear inexpensive when a traditional return-on-investment calculation considers only today’s utility rate. That figure may say nothing about future price increases, infrastructure replacement, wastewater treatment, supply disruptions, or the financial consequences of scarcity.
Calculating water’s true value also requires us to consider the infrastructure that delivers and treats it. Large, centralized water and sewer systems are often aging, costly, and vulnerable to widespread disruption. Distributed and district-scale systems can respond more readily to changing demand while reducing the consequences of a failure in any single part of the network.
One lesson from the webinar stood out: The strongest sustainability solutions rarely address only one problem. A green roof can manage stormwater while mitigating flooding, supporting biodiversity, and improving thermal comfort. A closed-loop water system can conserve water, lower energy use, strengthen resilience, and reduce pressure on public infrastructure.
At Global Network for Zero, we believe organizations need practical pathways that allow them to begin where they are. Some will start with emissions. Others will focus on energy performance, water stewardship, or waste reduction. What matters is establishing measurable progress while understanding how these systems ultimately work together.
That philosophy is reflected in our certification framework, which recognizes achievement across emissions, energy, water, and waste while encouraging organizations to continue expanding their sustainability journey over time. Progress may be incremental, but the strategy should always move toward a more integrated understanding of performance.
The goal is to move beyond a model in which buildings continually consume resources and produce waste. Our buildings and communities can instead restore, replenish, and strengthen the systems around them.
Carbon will remain one of our most important climate metrics. But the organizations that lead over the next decade won't simply reduce emissions — they'll manage resources more intelligently. They'll recognize that energy, water, materials, and waste are all part of the same system. That's the future Global Network for Zero is working to accelerate, one measurable step at a time.
This September, we will continue that conversation by examining what net zero means for colleges and universities. I hope you’ll join us as we explore how higher education can turn its campuses into models of climate leadership, resource stewardship, and resilience.