Intel has been off chasing waterfalls as the chip manufacturer’s biggest water facility in Hillsboro, Oregon recently surpassed the 1-billion-gallons recycled mark. 

The Oregon Water Recycling Facility’s milestone underscores the company’s efforts to restore 100% of its global water use. Under its global water strategy, Intel pledged to achieve net positive water use by 2030 through conserving 60 billion gallons of water and funding external water restoration projects. These include collaborative water initiatives with local communities and developing new technologies around sustainable water management for chip manufacturing. 

Intel's Oregon facility's 15-miles worth of network piping, electrical conduit, settling tanks — the largest of which is bigger than three Olympic-size swimming pools — and nearly 40,000 sensors monitoring and collecting real-time data, enable Intel to treat and recycle water used during the semiconductor manufacturing process.

The chipmaker then reuses that water on campus in equipment like scrubbers or cooling towers, Fawn Bergen, global water stewardship program manager at Intel, told SDxCentral. “Instead of discharging the water to a municipality, we are able to recycle the water and reuse it on campus,” she said.

The Oregon facility is only one piece of Intel’s water restoration plan. With the help of nonprofit partners like The Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, and the National Forest Foundation, Intel has funded 30 water restoration projects benefiting watersheds in Arizona, California, Oregon, and New Mexico, and recently it announced its first international project in Bengaluru, India. 

Of the 30 projects that the company has funded between 2017 and 2020, about 75% are complete and restoring water to the environment, Bergen said. “In addition to the large-scale water recycling plants in Qiryat Gat, Israel and Hillsboro, Oregon, we look for ways to use water efficiently and reuse where possible throughout all of our sites and operations,” she added.

Intel is currently taking the best practices learned in Oregon and applying them to its Ocotillo, Arizona facility, which is still under construction. 

From the deadly bushfires in Australia, withering coral reefs, rising sea levels, and ever more cataclysmic storms, water — or lack thereof — is the primary medium through which we will feel the effects of climate change, the United Nations reports. More than 2 billion people live in places experiencing high water stress, which results in food insecurity and limited access to clean water and sanitation.

“Our world is experiencing water challenges in multiple ways such as water scarcity, water pollution, inefficient water infrastructure and depleted water sources,” Bergen said. 

Intel has been incorporating water conservation practices at it sites and communities in which it operates for more than two decades, saving the company more than $267 million since 1998, according to Bergen. And in 2017, Intel ramped up its efforts, announcing a goal to restore 100% of its global water use — not to be confused with recycle.

The terms “reuse” and “recycle” are often used to define water that is repurposed. Of course, all water is recycled and reused as a part of the natural water cycle – evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. However, Bergen explained that in this context “the act of treating the water is referred to as “recycling” and the recycled water can then be “reused” onsite. 

Fast-forward two years and Intel has restored about 1 billion gallons of water to local watersheds across the U.S. 

However, Intel's efforts alone aren't enough, and the forecast for clean water remains dim without “collaborative and innovative approaches from governments, NGOs, and corporations,” Bergen added.