Since 2023, employee-led projects at ten Domtar mills have reduced the company’s water use by more than 2.3 billion gallons a year — enough to fill 3,480 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Twenty-four projects, designed and driven by the people who know the mills best, are helping Domtar’s paper and packaging mills reach the company’s water target: a 20 percent reduction in water-use intensity by 2030, compared to 2020 levels.
A Fund With One Goal
The program works like a competition. Through the Water Reduction Capex Fund, Domtar sets aside a portion of capital spending solely for water-reduction projects, and mill teams submit proposals for a share of it. There’s one unusual rule.
“The projects didn’t need to provide a financial return. The priority was saving water,” says Brian Kozlowski, senior director of environment and sustainability for Domtar’s Paper and Packaging business unit. “That gave our employees the chance to think beyond the bottom line — and they really did.”
Ideas From The Mill Floor
The best water-saving ideas didn’t come from headquarters. They came from operators, engineers and maintenance teams who saw where water could work harder — often in places most people never think about.
Some projects put used water back to work. When a new sheet of paper is made, the white water that drains away can be captured and put back to use instead of being replaced with fresh water. Same for cooling water, which carries heat away from equipment: instead of running it through once and letting it go, teams rerouted it to cooling towers, where it sheds heat and goes back to work again.
Other projects stop the draw before it starts. Many industrial pumps run a constant trickle of seal water to keep their moving parts cool and sealed tight. A trickle running around the clock adds up to millions of gallons; swapping older-style pump packing for modern mechanical seals cuts that trickle to nearly nothing.
The first year of the competition alone produced ten projects at seven mills, saving more than 1 billion gallons annually. The program has since grown to 24 completed projects at ten mills; the healthy competition between mills that leaders hoped for is real. This spring, Domtar’s Nekoosa Mill in Wisconsin earned the company’s internal Water Reduction Award for a series of conservation initiatives projected to save more than 129 million gallons.
According to Domtar’s Q2 2026 sustainability strategy update, the Water Reduction Capex Fund has now completed its third year of projects, and water use across the Paper & Packaging business unit is down 10 percent from 2020 levels through the first quarter of 2026, halfway to the 2030 target.
