Water Management

Water use and water quality are important global issues and 3M continues to work toward reducing our water releases and use. We have been actively managing our water releases for many years. 3M wastewater receives a high degree of treatment to reduce its environmental impact. We continue our improvement efforts today by investing in further pollution prevention projects and pollution control equipment. In addition, 3M has been preventing water releases through the Pollution Prevention Pays (3P) program for over 30 years. Since 1975, 3M has prevented over 115 million pounds of water releases (based on aggregated data from the first year of each project).

3M is also working to reduce our water consumption through recycling and improvements to our buildings and manufacturing processes. In 2005, 3M began a formal program to track and manage water use on a corporate level.