Turn urban wastewater into a circular industrial supply

Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)

The company is an automotive manufacturer with 25,002 employees as of year-end 2025, operating passenger, light, medium and heavy commercial vehicles production sites with a capacity of 934,500 units in Türkiye and Romania.

Vehicle manufacturing is water intensive. The Kocaeli plants have drawn on mains and well water in a basin where industrial, agricultural and urban demand are all rising at the same time.

At the beginning of 2026 the company commissioned a site-specific water scenario analysis built on hydrological modelling and covering three time horizons: short, medium and long term. The study assessed current and projected water use at each site, production projections, and population projections for the districts concerned. It concluded that the Kocaeli plants face high water stress over the medium term, defined as the coming 10 years.

Three factors made the case for action. Production capacity was set to grow, which would increase abstraction. Continued reliance on well water weakened the sites' position on climate adaptation. And the company had committed to reducing freshwater consumption per vehicle by 40 per cent by 2030, compared to 2019 baseline.

The initiative sits under the company's water policy and its Future.Now sustainability strategy. Water recovery investment is tracked in the performance indicators of the General Manager and of the investment and commercial vehicle operations leaders, which places it inside business performance management rather than inside an environmental work plan.

Location of the initiative: Kocaeli province, Türkiye — Yeniköy and Gölcük plants

The response was a circular water model developed with the metropolitan municipality's water and sewerage administration, in which the city's treated wastewater becomes a manufacturing input instead of a discharge.

Municipal wastewater is put through advanced treatment — membrane filtration followed by reverse osmosis — and the output is then verified against the quality parameters that automotive production processes require. Once verified, this reclaimed water is delivered to the plant and used in place of mains fresh water.

Quality is treated as the governing constraint rather than an afterthought. Operational parameters are monitored through online instruments, supported by scheduled laboratory and microbiological testing, because process acceptability is what determines whether recovered water can carry production volume rather than a demonstration load.

What separates this from conventional water efficiency work is the boundary it draws. Standard practice reduces consumption inside the factory fence through recycling, leak reduction and process adjustment. Here, water efficiency is extended beyond the site to combine municipal infrastructure, industrial production and climate resilience within a single model, so that the city's waste stream and the plant's input requirement are solved together.

The first application is at the Yeniköy plant. The investment was completed and the first results appeared in February 2026. A second application is planned for the Gölcük plant in 2028.

The initiative is an operational collaboration between Ford Otosan and the metropolitan water utility. The municipal administration contributes the advanced treatment infrastructure and its technical operation. The company contributes the production requirement, process integration, quality verification, investment feasibility and the sustainability targets the model has to serve. Both sides sit in a joint technical governance structure covering treatment performance, water quality, operational continuity and regional water security.

Figure 1: Project vision and partnership

Turning wastewater into a strategic resource, enabling Ford Otosan to reduce freshwater dependency while advancing circular water management and sustainable manufacturing.

Figure 2: Greywater treatment process flow

Flow diagram of the circular water model, from municipal wastewater through membrane filtration and reverse osmosis to verified process water entering the Yeniköy plant

Sustainability impact

Climate

The initiative is an adaptation measure. Its purpose is to protect production continuity in a basin where climate-driven water stress is projected to rise over the coming 10 years, rather than to abate a defined volume of greenhouse gas emissions.

No quantified Scope 1 or Scope 2 abatement is claimed for the initiative. The enabling climate effect comes from removing a dependency: by substituting recovered municipal wastewater for mains and well water, the plant reduces its exposure to abstraction limits and supply interruptions that a drier basin would otherwise impose on production.

The scenario analysis that triggered the project is itself a climate instrument. Modelling water availability against production and population growth converted a long-term physical climate risk into a dated investment decision, which is the mechanism other sites can copy even where the water balance differs.

Nature

Freshwater withdrawal is the impact that falls. During the early operating period at Yeniköy, freshwater consumption per vehicle declined from 1.85 cubic metres to 0.35 cubic metres, a reduction of approximately 81 per cent. At the current operating rate, first-phase savings are estimated at about 400,000 cubic metres per year; full-year verification is pending.

The local significance of this volume should be assessed against an official, period-matched district water-consumption dataset before an equivalence is published.

The pressure relieved is on a basin already assessed as heading towards high water stress, so the saving is not a general efficiency gain but a withdrawal of demand from a constrained groundwater and surface water system at the point where competition for it is intensifying.

Social

Kocaeli's urban wastewater is converted from a stream requiring disposal into a high-value industrial input, which can reduce pressure on freshwater sources shared with households and other users.

Securing the plants' water input also protects production continuity, and with it the employment and supplier activity that depend on the two sites, against a water shortage scenario that would otherwise constrain output.

The model creates an industrial reuse route for treated municipal wastewater and may strengthen the business case for advanced treatment in other municipalities.

Business impact

Benefits

The measured result is a fall in freshwater consumption per vehicle at the Yeniköy plant from 1.85 cubic metres to 0.35 cubic metres by the end of May 2026, an approximately 81 per cent reduction against the stated end-2025 baseline. At the early operating rate, the corresponding annualized saving is estimated at about 400,000 cubic metres; this is not yet a full-year realised result.

The financial benefit is direct. At May 2026 unit prices, moving to reclaimed water indicated a 62 per cent unit-cost advantage based on the May 2026 tariff comparison in water supply cost per cubic metre, so the environmental saving and the operating cost saving are the same transaction.

Feasibility work estimated the investment payback period at two years, which places the project inside the horizon normally applied to process improvement rather than to environmental compliance spending.

Beyond cash, the plants gain a second, independent water source. In a basin projected to move into high water stress, that converts a single-source supply risk into a diversified one and protects planned capacity growth that would otherwise have been constrained by water availability.

Costs

The Yeniköy application required an investment of EUR 1.3 million, covering connection to the advanced treatment supply, process integration and the quality verification capability that governs its use.

Operating costs shift rather than disappear. The tariff paid for recovered water replaces the mains and well water cost, while continuous quality monitoring, laboratory testing and the joint technical coordination with the municipal administration are added.

The model carries dependencies that have to be managed as costs in their own right. Process suitability of the treated water, infrastructure investment cost, permitting timelines, continuity of supply from the municipal system, and operational acceptance inside production were identified as the principal risks. They are managed through quality testing against defined parameters, feasibility and return analyses, joint technical governance with the water administration, and continuous monitoring.

Costs are contained by tying the specification to what the production processes actually need rather than to the highest achievable purity, by reusing the same measurement data for process control and for sustainability reporting, and by carrying the proven Yeniköy design into the Gölcük application in 2028 instead of designing a second scheme from the beginning.

Impact beyond sustainability and business

Co-benefits

The municipality gains a high-value outlet for treated urban wastewater, which creates a shared-use asset and may support the case for maintaining and extending advanced treatment capacity.

The model is portable to organised industrial zones and to other water-intensive sectors located near municipal treatment infrastructure, so a single plant-level investment produces a template for a basin-level shift.

Within the company, the scenario analysis capability built for Kocaeli now supports well water monitoring and water scenario work at other locations, extending a regional water resilience approach beyond the two sites where it started.

Potential side-effects

Substituting a municipal supply for own-source water transfers part of the plant's water security to an external party. Continuity of supply and treatment performance become shared risks, which is why the arrangement is governed jointly rather than through a purchase agreement.

Recovered water has to meet process specifications every day, not on average. Conductivity, suspended solids and microbiological compliance are monitored continuously because a quality excursion would reach painting, washing and cooling processes directly.

Operational acceptance is a real constraint. Production teams have to be confident that recovered water will not affect product quality, which is why quality verification data is shared with process owners rather than held inside the environmental function.

The Gölcük application, targeted for 2028 with an expected 70 per cent reduction in fresh water per vehicle, is a target rather than an achieved result, and the lower expected reduction reflects a different process mix at that site.

Typical business profile

The model suits manufacturing sites with high process water demand that operate in water-stressed basins and sit within reach of municipal wastewater treatment infrastructure, because the economics depend on the distance between the treatment plant and the point of use.

It is most relevant to organised industrial zones and to sectors such as automotive, textiles, food and chemicals, where water is a process input with defined quality requirements rather than a general utility.

Delivery requires an environment and sustainability function, production and facility management, maintenance, investment and finance teams working to a shared decision cycle, together with a municipal or regional water authority willing to treat industrial reuse as a service line.

Approach

1. Model the basin before modelling the plant: Commission a hydrological water scenario analysis for each site across short, medium and long time horizons, using current and projected site water use, production projections and district population projections, so that water stress is quantified as a dated business risk instead of being assumed.

2. Express the target as intensity, not volume: Set the objective as fresh water consumed per unit of production, so that a saving cannot be masked by a change in output, and so that the target survives capacity growth.

3. Approach the municipal water authority as a partner, not a vendor: Open a joint technical dialogue covering treated water volume, quality, delivery infrastructure and continuity of supply, and agree a governance structure before agreeing a price.

4. Specify the process requirement first: Define the water quality the production processes actually need — conductivity, suspended solids, microbiological compliance and process-specific limits — before selecting any treatment technology, so that the specification drives the investment rather than the reverse.

5. Select treatment against that specification: Choose technologies that meet the defined water-quality parameters and local regulatory requirements; in this case, membrane filtration and reverse osmosis were used and the output was validated before production use.

6. Build the investment case on avoided supply cost: Compare capital cost against the mains and well water cost per cubic metre at current tariffs, state the expected payback period explicitly, and confirm it after commissioning rather than only in the feasibility stage.

7. Measure against a clean baseline: Use validated digital meter data and a consistent production boundary for a full baseline period, then apply the same method after reclaimed water is introduced, so the reduction is attributable rather than inferred.

8. Institutionalise and replicate: Report the result into the sustainability committee cycle, attach it to senior management performance indicators, and treat the proven site as the reference design for the next plant instead of running a fresh design process.

Stakeholders involved

• Project leads: The principal decision-making body for sustainability is the Sustainability Committee, chaired by the General Manager, in which finance, legal and compliance, environment, production, risk management, product development, investor relations and procurement are represented. Water recovery investment is carried in the performance indicators of the General Manager and of the investment and commercial vehicle operations leaders, so progress is reviewed as business performance rather than as an environmental report line.

• Company functions: Environment, sustainability, production, facility management, maintenance, investment and finance teams run the project as a single multidisciplinary structure. The division of work is deliberate: environment and production teams jointly monitor quality continuity and operational suitability of the recovered water, finance and investment teams carry the feasibility and return analysis, and facility management and maintenance own the delivery infrastructure. Corporate integration is achieved by bringing reclaimed water into production, monitoring quality and consumption data, verifying process suitability and tracking investment performance in the same cycle.

• Main providers: The metropolitan municipality's water and sewerage administration is the partner on the infrastructure side, responsible for advanced treatment of urban wastewater and for its technical operation. Coordination with it is the critical dependency for water supply and infrastructure continuity. The pre-project water scenario analysis was carried out with a consultancy with academic research experience in hydrological modelling.

• Other: Field data, consumption indicators, process requirements and investment return analyses are reviewed on a regular cycle by the company and the water administration together, and stakeholder input has shaped the design since the concept stage through technical and operational feedback. The long-term shared value logic is explicit: the company reduces its freshwater dependency, the water administration converts urban wastewater into a high-value industrial input, and the Kocaeli basin gains regional water security. Local users and the wider basin benefit from the fresh water capacity released.

Key parameters to consider

Measurement compares freshwater consumption per vehicle before the Yeniköy investment, taken at the end of 2025, with consumption after advanced-treated reclaimed water entered use, taken at the end of May 2026. Both figures are expressed per vehicle so that production volume changes do not distort the result.

Impact is tracked through meter data, freshwater consumption per vehicle, recovered water volume, treated water quality, and investment feasibility and return calculations. Water quality is monitored through conductivity, suspended solids, microbiological compliance and process requirement parameters.

The timeline matters for anyone planning a similar project. Outputs began to appear at Yeniköy in February 2026, roughly three months before the first full measurement point at the end of May 2026, and the Gölcük application is scheduled for 2028 with a target of approximately 70 per cent reduction in fresh water per vehicle.

Both applications are designed to serve the same corporate target: a 40 per cent reduction in freshwater consumption per vehicle by 2030.

Implementation and operations tips

Start with the scenario analysis, not with the technology. The hydrological study is what converted an abstract water risk into a medium-term, site-specific projection, and without that framing the investment would have competed poorly against other capital projects.

Let the process specification select the treatment train. Defining the conductivity, suspended solids and microbiological limits the production processes require avoided over-specifying purity and kept the capital cost inside a two-year payback.

Treat the municipal water authority as a co-designer. The value on their side — converting a treatment liability into a revenue-bearing industrial input — is what sustains the arrangement, and it only becomes visible if the conversation starts with shared technical governance rather than with tariffs.

Expect operational acceptance to take as long as the engineering. Production teams need quality evidence before they accept recovered water into painting, washing and cooling, so plan for continuous data sharing with process owners rather than a single approval gate.

Be explicit about what is achieved and what is targeted. The Yeniköy approximately 81 per cent reduction is an early-period intensity result, with full-year volume verification pending; the Gölcük 70 per cent figure is a target for 2028 and should be presented as such.

External links

• 2025 sustainability report

• 2025 sustainability report (English)

• Kocaeli water utility (İSU) announcement