The Six Cities Facing Severe Water Challenges Right Now

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Cape Town, South Africa

•  After narrowly escaping "Day Zero," Cape Town has become a benchmark for municipal water efficiency. However, persistent multi-year drought risks, severe weather events across southern Africa, and ongoing population growth continue to test its modernized infrastructure.  

Mexico City, Mexico

•  Mexico City's water situation has reached critical levels. In 2024, the Cutzamala reservoir system hit historical lows of around 27percent capacity due to prolonged droughts and El Niño conditions. Hundreds of neighborhoods now face regular rationing, and groundwater extraction continues to deplete underground aquifers faster than they can recharge.  

São Paulo, Brazil

•  Severe conditions have returned following several consecutive years of below-average rainfall. The city's key Cantareira reservoir system has faced renewed pressure due to surrounding deforestation in the Amazon and aging infrastructure that loses roughly 29 percent of its treated water to leaks before reaching taps.  

Beijing, China

•  Over-extraction, rapid urbanization, and agricultural demand remain severe strains. While massive engineering projects like the South-to-North Water Diversion continue to supply the capital, surface water pollution and the imbalance between feeding China's vast population and powering major urban centers keep water security on a tightrope.  

Los Angeles, California

•  Following historic multi-year droughts and critical cutbacks along the Colorado River Basin, Los Angeles and the broader Southwest continue to manage tight allocations. Groundwater overdraft and reduced snowpack levels keep long-term water solvency a central focus of California's state environmental policy.  

Bengaluru (Bangalore), India

•  Rapid expansion in India's technology hub led to severe water crises in 2024 and ongoing stress in subsequent dry seasons. The city relies heavily on water tankers and daily hauling, as local lakes remain polluted and groundwater tables are drastically depleted.  

“The United Nations predicts this decade will be our most difficult in history when it comes to water,” says Klaus Reichardt, CEO and Founder of Waterless Co., Inc. “Our only option is to reduce consumption and use water more efficiently.”

Water Efficiency Guide: Benefits, Key Upgrades & Action Plan

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: September 11, 2026

Media Contact: Robert Kravitz | Public Relations & Media Communications

Email: robert.kravitz@outlook.com

Water Efficiency Guide: Benefits, Key Upgrades & Action Plan

New Strategic Framework Outlines Permanent Solutions to Help Commercial Facilities and Communities Combat Growing Water Scarcity and Rising Operational Costs

Vista, Ca — As population growth, persistent drought, and aging infrastructure continue to strain municipal water supplies across the country, businesses and facility managers face mounting pressure to reduce water consumption.

A newly released industry overview titled "Water Efficiency: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Improve It" highlights practical strategies for commercial, industrial, and residential properties to achieve permanent water savings without compromising operational performance.

 The guide, found on LinkedIn, emphasizes a critical distinction that is often overlooked in sustainability planning: the difference between water conservation and water efficiency.

While conservation focuses on temporary behavioral reductions during shortages, water efficiency delivers permanent, long-term structural reductions by upgrading technologies, eliminating waste, and optimizing system performance.

"Water efficiency is about getting the greatest possible benefit from every gallon," said Klaus Reichardt, CEO and Founder of Waterless Co., Inc. "The smartest way to manage water is either to find ways not to use it at all or to ensure that if a gallon of water must be used, it accomplishes its job perfectly without requiring another gallon to back it up."

 Key Benefits of Commercial Water Efficiency

•         Protects Critical Water Resources: Stretches local water supplies and reduces pressure on rivers, lakes, and underground aquifers without costly infrastructure expansions.

 •         Lowers Operational & Utility Expenses: Yields direct savings on water and sewer bills, alongside reduced energy costs for water pumping, heating, and treatment.

 •         Strengthens Climate Resilience: Prepares commercial facilities to maintain full operational continuity during droughts and municipal water restrictions.

 •         Reduces Wastewater Demands: Decreases overall discharge volume into municipal collection and treatment facilities.

Ten Step Roadmap 

To assist facility managers in starting or upgrading their water management programs, the guide lays out a structured, 10-step practical roadmap:

 1.       Establish a Baseline: Evaluate historical utility bills and consumption patterns.

 2.       Conduct a Water Audit: Identify key usage zones, high-volume fixtures, and system losses.

 3.       Address Leaks Instantly: Perform regular inspections of plumbing, cooling systems, and irrigation lines.

 4.       Target High-Volume Areas: Focus early capital expenditures on high-use fixtures to maximize return on investment (ROI).

 5.       Upgrade Legacy Plumbing: Install high-efficiency toilets (1.28 GPF or lower), low-flow aerators, and no-water restroom technologies such as waterless urinals.

 6.       Optimize Irrigation: Deploy smart weather-based controllers and drip systems to prevent evaporation and runoff.

 7.       Implement Submetering: Install multi metering systems to track consumption across individual building zones or mechanical systems.

 8.       Explore On-Site Water Reuse: Recapture non-potable water for secondary industrial or landscape applications.

 9.       Engage Building Occupants: Train staff and tenants on proactive water-saving habits.

 10.     Track & Measure Results: Continuously monitor utility savings and operational performance over time.

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About Waterless Co., Inc.

Established in 1991, Waterless Co., Inc. is a pioneer in commercial water efficiency and non-water plumbing technology. Headquartered in Vista, California, the company specializes in manufacturing innovative, high-performance waterless urinals and sustainable restroom solutions that help commercial buildings lower operating costs, conserve natural resources, and advance facility sustainability worldwide. 

Growth of the Global Waterless Urinal Market Through 2033

According to current market research by the CMI Team, the global Waterless Urinal Market is projected to grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 10.2% from 2024 to 2033, rising from USD 354.3 million in 2024 to USD 851.2 million by 2033.

Market growth is being driven by increasing pressure to reduce water consumption, lower utility costs, and limit wastewater output. Waterless urinals support these goals by using specialized cartridge or sealing technologies that eliminate the need for flushing water.

Adoption is gaining momentum across commercial buildings, educational institutions, transportation hubs, and public facilities as organizations align restroom infrastructure with sustainability targets and operating-cost reduction strategies.

As water-efficiency regulations become more stringent and facility owners prioritize measurable conservation outcomes, the market is positioned for continued expansion across both developed and emerging economies.

From Waterless Co, Inc to You: Enjoy Your Labor Day Weekend

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Cold Showers: The Surprising Secret to Healthier, Greener Living

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As extreme heat waves sweep across North America, more people are ditching the hot tap and turning to icy showers to beat the sweltering temperatures. Beyond offering quick relief from the heat, cold water therapy provides scientifically backed benefits for your health, productivity, and wallet.

The Science Behind Cold Water Therapy

 A landmark study conducted in the Netherlands followed over 3,000 participants for 30 consecutive days. Volunteers took their standard morning showers but finished with a 30-, 60-, or 90-second blast of cold water (~50°F / 10–12°C)—a stark contrast to the average U.S. shower temperature of 106°F.

 The findings were striking:

• 29% Reduction in Sick Days: Participants who ended their showers with cold water took nearly a third fewer sick days compared to the warm-shower control group.

• Duration Doesn't Matter: A 30-second burst of cold water proved just as effective as a 90-second blast.

• Lasting Habits: Impressed by the sudden boost in energy and alertness, two-thirds of the participants continued the habit after the study ended.

Lead researcher Dr. Geert A. Buijze attributes these health benefits to the body's natural physiological response: cold water activates the fight-or-flight system, sparking a surge of energy-boosting hormones and elevating metabolic rates.

Saving Money and the Planet

 Lowering your shower temperature does more than invigorate your morning routine; it significantly cuts energy consumption and household utility expenses.

 According to Klaus Reichardt, founder and CEO of Waterless Co.:

• Lower Energy Bills: Heating water accounts for a major portion of residential utility costs. Lowering shower temperatures can cut individual water-heating expenses by up to 75% annually. 

• Environmental Impact: Reducing water-heating energy lowers household carbon emissions, making cold finishes an easy, daily sustainability win.

 How to Get Started 

You don't need to commit to an entirely freezing shower to reap the rewards. Try finishing your usual warm shower with a 30-second blast of cold water. This simple tweak can boost your morning vitality, build resilience, cut energy costs, and lower your environmental footprint.

Waterless Co., Inc is a pioneer in water efficiency. We are the go-to company when it comes to reducing water consumption, understanding the many benefits of waterless urinals, and finding ways to use water more efficiently.  For more information, contact a Waterless Co Specialist. 

Commercial Restroom Renovation Lessons for Facility Managers

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PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Commercial Restroom Renovation

Lessons for Facility Managers

Vista, CA — September 1, 2026 — A commercial restroom renovation can improve water efficiency, reduce maintenance, increase durability, support accessibility, and create a better experience for building occupants—especially when upgrades involve multiple restrooms.

When one large office building planned renovations for 30 restrooms, the facility manager consulted Klaus Reichardt, CEO and founder of Waterless Co., Inc., for recommendations on making the project more efficient and easier to maintain. His guidance applies to anyone planning an office restroom renovation or commercial restroom upgrade.

1. Standardize Restroom Fixtures

Standardizing toilets, faucets, urinals, soap and paper dispensers, and other accessories can simplify purchasing, inventory, and maintenance. It also allows building engineers and custodial teams to become familiar with the same equipment.

2. Consider Total Cost—Not Just Purchase Price

When selecting restroom products, consider expected service life, replacement-part availability, ease of repair, maintenance requirements, water consumption, installation, and manufacturer support.

Lifecycle cost should be part of the purchasing decision—not an afterthought.

3. Make Water Efficiency Part of the Design

Restrooms can be a significant source of water consumption in commercial buildings. High-efficiency toilets and urinals use considerably less water than older fixtures, while waterless urinals eliminate flush water entirely.

Addressing water efficiency during the design phase can help reduce long-term water consumption and operating costs.

4. Use Touch-Free Technology Strategically

Sensor-operated faucets, soap dispensers, and flush valves can reduce touchpoints and help control water use.

However, facility managers should consider sensor reliability, battery life, replacement parts, and ease of maintenance. The goal should be reliable restroom technology—not technology for its own sake.

5. Select Finishes for Durability

Commercial restrooms face heavy use, moisture, cleaning chemicals, and, in some facilities, vandalism. Materials should therefore be selected for performance as well as appearance.

A simple question to ask is: How will this restroom look and perform five years from now?

6. Build Accessibility Into the Design

Accessibility should be addressed before fixtures are purchased or construction begins. Review fixture clearances, grab-bar placement, fixture heights, reach ranges, door swings, sink and counter access, and maneuvering space.

The final design should comply with applicable accessibility requirements.

7. Design for Maintenance

Think about the people who will clean, inspect, and repair the restroom every day. Make sure fixtures and shutoff valves are accessible and that cleaning can be performed efficiently.

Low-use restrooms deserve particular attention. When floor drains aren't used regularly, water in drain traps can evaporate and allow unpleasant sewer odors into the building. Applying a non-evaporating drain treatment, such as EverPrime, can help prevent these odors.

8. Test One Restroom Before Renovating All of Them

For large projects, build one complete restroom first and use it as a real-world test.

Check fixture placement, sensor performance, accessibility, cleaning access, maintenance, and overall user experience. A problem discovered in one restroom is much easier and less expensive to correct than the same problem repeated throughout the building.

Think Beyond the Renovation

“The best commercial restroom renovations continue to perform well years after construction,” says Reichardt. “For facility managers, this means planning for the full lifecycle of the restroom—from water consumption and fixture durability to cleaning, maintenance, accessibility, and occupant experience—so the project improves the performance of the entire building.”

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About Waterless Co., Inc.

Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Vista, California, Waterless Co., Inc. manufactures waterless urinals and restroom products that help facilities reduce water consumption, lower operating costs, and simplify maintenance. Its products are installed in commercial, institutional, educational, and government facilities worldwide.

How to Solve a Drought: Proven Strategies for Water Resilience

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There is no single solution to addressing drought now spreading around the globe. The most effective approach combines using less water, maximizing existing supplies, and developing new sources. Communities that combine these strategies build long-term resilience against declining water supplies.

 1. Modernize Agricultural Irrigation

Agriculture accounts for approximately 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, offering the largest potential for water savings.

• Drip Irrigation: Replacing traditional flood irrigation with drip systems delivers water directly to plant roots, improving water-use efficiency by over 60% in certain crops.

• Overcoming Adoption Barriers: While high initial equipment costs present an obstacle, targeted subsidies and financing programs help farmers make the transition.

 2. Recycle and Reuse Wastewater

Instead of discharging treated wastewater, communities can clean and reuse it for irrigation, industrial processes, groundwater recharge, or advanced potable reuse (drinking water).

• Global & Local Success: Israel recycles nearly 90% of its municipal wastewater for agricultural use. In California, Orange County purifies wastewater to replenish underground aquifers that feed local drinking wells. 

3. Implement Desalination for Coastal Regions

Desalination provides coastal communities with a reliable freshwater source, primarily using reverse osmosis to force seawater through membranes that remove salt and impurities.

• Key Considerations: Desalination is energy-intensive, costly, and produces concentrated brine waste. It is most practical where conventional freshwater sources are scarce and reliable energy is available.  

4. Expand Underground Water Storage

Managed aquifer recharge creates underground water reserves by allowing water to soak into suitable land or directly injecting treated water into aquifers during wet periods.

• Strategic Timing: Widely used across Arizona, California, and Texas, this strategy requires proactive management—replenishing groundwater reserves before the next severe drought hits.  

5. Apply Cloud Seeding as a Supplemental Tool

Cloud seeding enhances precipitation by introducing agents into existing clouds to encourage rain or snow. 

Realistic Expectations: A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) review found precipitation increases ranging from 0% to 20%, depending on atmospheric conditions. Because it cannot create rain from clear skies, cloud seeding serves primarily as a supplemental tool for building mountain snowpack. 

6. Reduce Urban and Household Water Demand

Urban water efficiency in commercial facilities and residential properties is just as critical as agricultural conservation.

• Drought-Tolerant Landscaping: Outdoor watering accounts for a massive share of residential use. Xeriscaping—replacing conventional lawns with native plants, efficient drip lines, and moisture-retaining mulch—drastically cuts demand.  

• Commercial and Restroom Fixture Upgrades: High-efficiency toilets using 1.28 gallons per flush (gpf) are now the standard benchmark for interior savings. Furthermore, schools and commercial facilities achieve dramatic water reductions by installing waterless urinals, saving up to 35,000 gallons of water per fixture annually.  

7. The Bottom Line

We can do this. We have many opportunities and technologies available to us to help reduce water consumption and use water much more efficiently.

What is Happening to the Rhine River?

The Rhine River in Germany is much lower and drier today than it was five years ago. In 2021, heavy rain caused high water and near-flooding in some areas. Now, long dry periods, warmer weather, and less Alpine snowmelt have pushed parts of the river to record-low levels.  

What Has Changed

·        Water levels: In 2021, heavy rainfall raised the river and caused near-flooding in parts of the Rhine basin. Today, the river is much lower because of extended dry weather, warm springs, and reduced snowmelt from the Alps. At important shipping points such as Kaub, water levels have dropped to extremely low measurements.  

·        River flow: The amount of water moving through the river has also fallen sharply. At major measuring points, summer flow is far below normal and has reached new record lows.  

·        Exposed riverbeds: Places that were covered by water five years ago now show sandbanks, gravel bars, and dry sections of riverbed, especially near areas such as Boppard and Kaub.  

Why It Matters

·        Shipping limits: In 2021, cargo ships could usually carry normal loads. Today, many barges must carry only a small share of their usual cargo—or stop operating—because the water is too shallow.  

·        Business impact: Low water makes it harder and more expensive to move goods. This affects industries along the Rhine, including chemical, steel, and energy companies, and can force shipments onto rail or road instead.

Cloud Seeding: Can It Really Ease the West's Water Crisis?

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As drought grips the American West year after year, snowpacks continue to thin, and water agencies face mounting supply pressure, a once-fringe technology is getting a serious second look: cloud seeding.

What used to sound like science fiction is now a genuine line item in many water managers' toolkits. But how much can it actually deliver?

What Cloud Seeding Actually Does

Cloud seeding isn't magic — it can't summon rain from a clear sky. It works only with clouds that are already there, giving them a nudge to produce more precipitation than they would on their own.

Here's the basic process:

• Delivery: Planes or ground-based generators release fine particles — typically silver iodide — into promising clouds.

• Why it works: Those particles act as seeds for ice crystals, which then grow heavy enough to fall as rain or snow.

• Where the tech stands today: The practice dates back to the 1940s in the U.S., but it's now guided by radar tracking, atmospheric models, and live sensor data to zero in on the clouds most likely to respond.

Just How Effective Is It?

According to a review by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), seeding can boost precipitation somewhere in the range of 0% to 20% — a wide window that depends heavily on the conditions in play.

Two things make the technology hard to evaluate:

1.    No clouds, no seeding. The right temperature, moisture, and wind conditions have to already exist — this only amplifies storms, it doesn't create them.

2.    Hard to isolate the effect. Telling the difference between precipitation caused by seeding and precipitation that would have fallen anyway is genuinely difficult, which is why the GAO says solid long-term data is still thin.

Who's Using It, What It Costs, and Is It Safe

Weather modification is gaining traction, but not without pushback:

• State-by-state split: Nine or more Western states currently fund seeding programs, while others have moved to limit or ban the practice outright.

• Safety picture: GAO findings suggest current silver iodide levels aren't a meaningful risk to people or ecosystems — though what happens if these programs scale up significantly hasn't been well studied.

Cloud Seeding Isn't a Substitute for Water Efficiency

Seeding won't solve drought or climate change on its own — it's a supplement, not a cure, and its role is limited to boosting snowpack when conditions allow.

Water efficiency works differently: it permanently lowers demand, through measures like waterless urinals or water-conserving HVAC systems, rather than trying to increase supply.

Bottom Line

Cloud seeding can help storms produce a bit more moisture than they would naturally, but it's no replacement for the fundamentals — protecting groundwater, maintaining reservoirs, repairing aging infrastructure, and improving agricultural water use. The West's water future depends on pairing supply-side tools like cloud seeding with real demand-side conservation.

What's Happening to the Colorado River?

The Colorado River carries about 20% less water today than it did 20 years ago.

📉 How much drier is the Colorado River now?

The most authoritative long‑term analyses show:

• River flow has declined ~20% since 2000, a reduction driven by persistent aridification, hotter temperatures, and reduced snowpack.

• Average annual flows before 2000 were already lower than early‑20th‑century assumptions, but since 2000 they have dropped further to ~12.4 million acre‑feet, compared with historical averages of ~14.6 MAF.

• This decline is not a temporary drought—it reflects a multi‑decade structural drying of the basin.

🔥 Why the river is so much drier

Scientific studies attribute a large share of the decline to warming temperatures, not just reduced precipitation:

• A 1.5°C temperature increase over the past two decades caused an estimated 10.3% reduction in runoff, equivalent to losing the entire volume of Lake Mead.

Hotter air pulls more moisture from soils and vegetation, meaning less snowmelt reaches the river.

🏞 Reservoirs show the impact

Lake Mead and Lake Powell—once nearly full—are now at historic lows, together holding less water than at any time since 1957. This reflects the cumulative effect of two decades of reduced inflow.

📌 Bottom line

The Colorado River is roughly one‑fifth drier today than it was 20 years ago, and the drying trend is driven primarily by long‑term warming and aridification rather than short‑term weather cycles.