Stodels is showing how businesses can support Cape Town’s water resilience by reducing consumption, promoting water-wise gardening and helping customers make more sustainable choices every day.
As Cape Town prepares for a longer, drier summer, the City’s Water and Sanitation Directorate is encouraging businesses and residents to think more carefully about how they use one of the city’s most important resources.
A recent visit to Stodels Garden Centre in Bellville highlighted how businesses can contribute to that effort through practical water-saving measures while also helping customers adopt more sustainable habits at home.
For Stodels, water conservation starts with its own operations.
The Bellville branch has used borehole water since 2022, with the water treated on site to drinking-water standards.
Staff monitor water meters daily, allowing unusual increases in consumption to be identified quickly and potential leaks investigated before significant quantities of water are lost.
Regular staff awareness and training sessions reinforce the importance of responsible water use, while signage across the business reminds employees and customers to conserve water and ensure taps are properly closed.
The approach demonstrates how environmental responsibility can be incorporated into everyday business operations rather than treated as a separate sustainability project.
For businesses operating in water-stressed environments, monitoring consumption, maintaining infrastructure and changing staff behaviour can collectively reduce pressure on municipal supplies.
But Stodels is also extending that influence beyond its own premises.
“At Stodels Garden Centres, we actively source, stock and promote water-wise plants and products for our customers to plant or use in their own gardens,” said Justin Emrich, Chief Operations Manager at Stodels Bellville.
Gardeners are being encouraged to use bark or mulch around plants to reduce evaporation and keep moisture in the soil for longer.
For appropriate potted plants, the garden centre recommends using a dunking method that allows the growing medium to absorb water efficiently rather than repeatedly watering from the surface.
Water-retaining soil additives can also be incorporated when planting or repotting to help hold both moisture and nutrients closer to plant roots.
Tree planting provides another longer-term opportunity.
Trees can create shade, reduce temperatures and contribute to cooler garden environments during Cape Town’s hot summer months, potentially reducing the amount of water required by surrounding plants.
These individual changes may appear relatively small, but multiplied across thousands of households and gardens they can contribute to meaningful reductions in water consumption.
That is where the initiative connects directly with shared value.
Stodels has a commercial interest in helping people create successful gardens, while Cape Town has an environmental and social interest in ensuring those gardens use water responsibly.
Customers benefit from plants and products better suited to water-conscious gardening, while reduced consumption helps protect the broader water system on which households, communities and businesses all depend.
Mayoral Committee Member for Water and Sanitation Alderman Zahid Badroodien said securing Cape Town’s water future requires action from both the municipality and wider society.
“Our teams are on the ground every day replacing kilometres of aging pipes and aggressively fixing leaks to secure Cape Town’s water future, but building a resilient city is a shared mission,” Badroodien said.
He said responsible consumption by businesses could contribute directly to protecting the city’s shared water supply.
“When local businesses like Stodels innovate to reduce their consumption, it protects our shared supply and ensures that every community has reliable access to clean water during the dry months.”
The partnership between public infrastructure investment and private-sector behaviour is particularly important because water resilience cannot be achieved through municipal interventions alone.
Repairing pipes and reducing network losses addresses one side of the equation.
Businesses and households reducing unnecessary consumption addresses another.
Together, they create a more resilient system.
For companies considering their environmental, social and governance commitments, water management is also becoming increasingly important.
Water efficiency can reduce operational costs while decreasing environmental pressure and contributing to the long-term resilience of the communities in which businesses operate.
It also provides an opportunity for companies to influence behaviour through their products, services and customer relationships.
A garden centre promoting drought-tolerant plants, a manufacturer redesigning water-intensive processes or a property company installing more efficient systems can all contribute to a wider conservation effort.
The social dimension is equally important.
Water saved through responsible consumption contributes to protecting a shared resource that must continue serving households across the city, including communities where reliable access has a direct impact on health, dignity and quality of life.
“I challenge all businesses and residents to look at how we can collectively use less, because every drop we save together protects our city’s dignity and continued growth,” Badroodien said.
Cape Town’s experience with severe drought has already demonstrated that water security is not solely an environmental concern.
It affects businesses, employment, households, tourism, food production and the ability of a city to continue growing sustainably.
Building resilience therefore requires both major infrastructure investment and thousands of smaller decisions about how water is used every day.
At Stodels, that means monitoring meters, identifying leaks, using alternative water sources and helping customers rethink how they garden.
None of those interventions alone will secure Cape Town’s water future.
Together, however, they demonstrate how responsible businesses can turn sustainability commitments into practical actions that protect resources while helping customers do the same.
As the city enters its drier summer months, the message is straightforward: water resilience is a shared responsibility, and every business and household has an opportunity to contribute.
