General Electric / GE Aerospace

GE Aerospace, a U.S. aerospace manufacturer in the aerospace and defense sector, designs, develops, and produces aircraft engines, propulsion systems, and related products for commercial and military aircraft. As manufacturing, research, and office locations feature prominently among its facilities, water use is relevant to operations, risk, wastewater management, and resilience in water-stressed regions.

GE Aerospace's clearest example of success is at the John F. Welch Technology Center in India, a research and technology development site in a city with low water availability. The company put in sensors and aerators on all washroom faucets, upgraded housekeeping to use less water, added more rainwater harvesting, and used treated wastewater for toilet flushing and landscape irrigation. This brought 18 cubic meters/day in outsourced water savings and 145 cubic meters/day of reused/recycled wastewater and rainwater.

At a company level, GE Aerospace also compiles water use and discharge data from the main offices, manufacturing sites, research labs, and other operational control sites. It tracks water use by categories, business units, sites, countries, and regions, and conducted a water-stress assessment in February 2025 with WRI Aqueduct. The assessment identified two manufacturing sites located in India and Mexico as being in areas of extremely high water stress.

The main shortcoming is that its report excludes companywide water withdrawal, total consumption, discharge volume, and water intensity. It also acknowledges that some sites' estimates are based on unavailable meter data or invoices, impairing accuracy. If GE Aerospace disclosed additional total companywide metrics, there would be a stronger companywide water picture.