Water 100 Executive Summit

The Water 100 Project Executive Summit on September 21, 2020 brought together corporate leaders to brainstorm how they might deploy their organization’s strengths to help solve Puget Sound’s greatest water quality problems. Companies were represented across business sectors including Boeing, Vulcan Real Estate, Microsoft and Janicki Industries.

The summit was a starting point, a first invitation to create robust partnerships to innovate and implement solutions to clean up Puget Sound —with an emphasis on solutions that will support resilience, equity and economic recovery.

Paul Hawken, the creator of Project Drawdown and a climate action leader, gave a keynote address to kick off the group’s discussion. He emphasized learning from climate action progress, making the mission engaging to a broad audience, setting unreasonable goals, and grounding the work in social justice.

Paul capped his keynote with the idea of “regeneration”. In biology, regeneration is the process of renewal, restoration, and regrowth that makes ecosystems resilient to natural fluctuations or events that cause disturbance or damage. He encouraged the group to look at Water 100 from the basis of regeneration. “Creating, imagining, and regenerating as opposed to stopping things that are harmful—which we also have to do, but beyond stopping the harmful is starting something beautiful.”

The Water 100 Project intends to jump-start the regeneration of Puget Sound by inspiring and supporting efforts to build a clean water economy in Washington and rapid testing of innovative solutions that will lead to managing water globally. Rather than focusing on restrictions or prohibitions, the Water 100 approach is centered on end goals, performance and building engagement. Water 100 is an invitation start something new.