February 20, 2008—Twenty-one of the UK’s leading food and drink manufacturers recently signed a historic agreement to improve their water efficiency and thereby reduce water use. Once rolled out across the sector as a whole, the initiative could save some 140 million liters of water per day, with a combined financial saving of around £60m per year on water bills.
Under the Federation House Commitment to Water Efficiency, jointly developed by the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) and resource efficiency experts Envirowise, the first 21 signatories have pledged to review their on-site water use and take action to reduce this wherever possible.
The signatories are: apetito; Birds Eye Iglo; Britvic; Cadbury Schweppes; Coca-Cola Enterprises; GlaxoSmithKline; Kellogg Marketing & Sales Co; Kraft Foods UK; Mars Snackfood; Müller Dairy (UK); Nestlé UK; PepsiCo UK; Premier Foods; Tate & Lyle; UIN Foods; Unilever UK; Uniq; United Biscuits; Warburtons; Weetabix; and Young’s Seafood.
The Commitment will help FDF members to achieve their water reduction goals, as set out in the Federation’s recently launched Five-fold Environmental Ambition. It will also be central to achieving the industry-wide target in the Food Industry Sustainability Strategy to reduce water use, outside of that embedded in products themselves, by 20% by 2020 compared to 2007.
Companies working with Envirowise will review their current water use and develop site specific action plans to significantly cut water use and costs within six months of signing up to the commitment. They will report annually to Envirowise on water and cost savings made on site. Envirowise will offer signatories a package of support measures to help them.
