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Commercial & Institutional Water Users

EPA established WaterSense with the goal of saving water for future generations. By transforming the market for water-efficient products, services, and practices, WaterSense is helping to relieve the costly burden of growing water supply and wastewater infrastructure. Since 2006, the WaterSense label has helped consumers identify products and services that meet EPA's criteria for water efficiency and performance.

In an effort to further this mission, EPA is now considering expansion of WaterSense to include partnership and participation options for users in the Commercial and Institutional (CI) sector. Commercial and institutional users of water include a wide range of individuals, businesses, and organizations such as schools, retail stores, office buildings, and hospitals just to name a few. Commercial and institutional users consume a large amount of fresh water in the United States.

With this in mind, EPA sought input from its partners and other stakeholders on the current state of data related to water use in the CI as well as potential program options.

EPA released a white paper outlining the possibility of expanding WaterSense to include opportunities for Commercial and Institutional partners on August 20, 2009. The first round of comments were accepted until September 20, 2009:

EPA held two public meetings to discuss potential program options for a WaterSense Commercial and Institutional program on October 4, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV and on January 27, 2010 via webinar. For more information on the October 4, 2009 meeting, please see the public meeting summary (PDF) (28 pp, 372K, About PDF) and presentation (PDF) (16 pp, 100K, About PDF) from this meeting. For a summary of all meetings and comments please see the Commercial and Institutional Executive Summary (PDF) (3 pp, 31K, About PDF).

Additional information, data and comments on a potential WaterSense CI program will still be considered. Please forward any applicable information to the WaterSense Helpline at watersense@epa.gov.

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