Verizon

Verizon Communications Inc. is a U.S.-based telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. The company provides wireless, broadband, fiber, network infrastructure, and business communications services. Because Verizon operates technical facilities, data centers, offices, and retail sites, water use is mainly tied to cooling, HVAC systems, maintenance, and municipal water withdrawal; however, water is still a small part of Verizon's resource management.

Verizon's primary water sustainability initiative involves reducing water use in technical facilities, where network equipment requires controlled cooling. These sites account for the highest water consumption within Verizon's operations. Accordingly, the company has prioritized cooling tower maintenance, upgrades to water-cooled systems, leak monitoring, and, where feasible, replacement of traditional water-cooled equipment with closed-loop and refrigerant-based systems. Additionally, Verizon monitors fluctuations in water withdrawal to identify potential leaks, while energy-efficiency upgrades in technical buildings further reduce cooling-related water demand.

The company also links water conservation to facility consolidation. By reducing leased and owned building space and adjusting HVAC systems to accommodate hybrid work arrangements, Verizon has decreased resource demand across offices and support facilities. The company reports a 7% reduction in water withdrawal from 2019 to 2024. Previous disclosures indicated that water use declined from 2.35 billion gallons in 2019 to 1.98 billion gallons in 2022, representing a reduction of approximately 0.37 billion gallons, or 15.7%. While the trend is positive, disclosure remains limited.

Verizon's distinguishing contribution is data provenance: it states how its water numbers are produced, with roughly 84% of reported withdrawal drawn from utility billing and 16% estimated — a level of methodological candor its peers do not offer. That transparency is about the measurement, not the performance. Site-level savings, reuse, and discharge remain undisclosed, and the claim that most withdrawal sits outside high-risk regions is asserted without a quantified share.