3M is investing more than $170 million at our Cordova, Illinois, site to engineer and install cutting-edge technology as we pursue our company-wide goal of enhancing the quality of water returned to our environment.  

“These local investments in our operations will help sustain our environmental and manufacturing performance into the future, allowing us continued opportunities to contribute to the economic success of the Quad Cities and the entire region,” said David Andrews, site leader at 3M Cordova. “The technology we’re adding to our site here in Cordova gets us closer to achieving our $1 billion, 20-year environmental goals for our company, which include improved water quality, reduced water and plastic use, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.”   

Launched in 2021, the company’s actions will reduce overall water use at the Cordova site by 25 percent and also return higher quality water to the environment after it is used in manufacturing operations. In late 2022, the newly-installed technology designed specifically for the site featuring a combination of granular activated carbon, ion exchange, reverse osmosis and other methods will go online and enhance already existing systems in place. That grouping of technologies tailored to our facility’s needs is highly effective at removing suspended solids and carbon-based chemistries – as well as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – that may be present in process water. It’s anticipated to capture more than 95 percent of PFAS in water.  

The second phase of the updates, targeted for the end of 2022, installs the capability for the ion exchange portion of the filtration system to regenerate the necessary materials to operate, helping reduce the waste byproducts created by the system by 97 percent. 

The systems being developed and installed in Cordova will serve as a roadmap for future technology investments across the company. By 2024, 3M plans to install state-of-the-art water treatment processes at certain locations worldwide, which will drive a more than 95 percent reduction in 3M’s PFAS discharges globally by 2025, with a goal of more than 99 percent by 2030.