Promotion of Socio-Environmental Sustainability by Water Utilities: Optimal Budget’s Estimation and Results’ Analysis of Varying Company Size

Sustainable management of water resources cannot ignore environmental aspects, let alone social and economic ones. To curb water waste, and groundwater pollution and promote equitable access to the resource, water utilities are required to implement a series of initiatives to promote environmental and social sustainability. In this paper, an optimization model is proposed to define the budget that water utilities should allocate to promote socio-environmental sustainability, optimally conveying their message and achieving the right trade-off between capital invested and audience reached. The optimization problem is solved using a nonlinear programming model. The application of the model shows that both big and small water companies should invest an amount that can increase the visibility of sustainability's promotional message by 20%. However, this amount is about 0.2% of turnover for large utilities and about 17% for small utilities. The model can be a useful tool for both budgeting and incentivizing sustainable practices.