Food and drink giants vow to cut water use

Over 20 of the UK's largest food and drink manufacturers, including Britvic, Cadbury Schweppes, GlaxoSmithKline and Nestlé, have committed to embrace new water efficiency measures designed to cut their water use by up to 140m litres a day.

The new Federation House Commitment has been jointly developed by industry group the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) and government-funded environmental consultancy Envirowise and aims to encourage firms to monitor water usage and adopt water management best practices.

Under the commitment, the 21 firms have agreed to work with Envirowise to measure their current water use and develop action plans to reduce water use within six months. They will also provide Envirowise with annual reports detailing their progress which the FDF will use to generate an annual report on water use for the entire industry.

The FDF said that if rolled out across the sector as a whole the best practices promoted by Envirowise could save water equivalent to 56 Olympic size swimming pools a day and deliver a combined financial saving of £60m a year.

A spokeswoman for the FDF said that water saving best practices would vary from company to company but added that initiatives such as installing water meters at every stage of food production processes and implementing recycling systems that reuse waste water where likely to widely considered under the scheme.

The commitment aims to help the industry meet its goal of cutting water use by 20 per cent on 2007 levels by 2020 as set out in its Food Industry Sustainability Strategy, she added.

The FDF also defended the decision not to push for full public reporting on water use as part of the new initiative, arguing the aim was to encourage as many firms as possible to sign up to the scheme and begin working with Envirowise. "The idea is to encourage firms of all sizes to get involved," said the spokeswoman. "Companies can only do as much as their systems allow so this [reporting to Envirowise] is a way of ensuring as many companies as possible get involved."