GE Water have given the award to National Semiconductor Ltd for managing to achieve significant water and cost savings. National Semiconductor Ltd have cut their water usage by 40 million gallons and reduce its carbon footprint by 215 tons - an overall energy savings should be over 500,000kw per year.

Using GE Water's ultrapure water treatment systems has meant that the usual recovery rates of 75-50% found when using reverse osmosis systems have increased to around 99%, due to the collection of and utilisation or reverse osmosis rejections and electrodeionisation concentrate.

The GE award is given to the top one percentile of GE Water customers who demonstrate significant environmental and economical performance improvements, balancing environemental, industrial and sustainability challenges.