Water Efficiency

The food and drink manufacturing industry is a significant user of water. Water is an essential ingredient in many food and drink products. It is also used in food and drink preparation, production and cleaning processes.

However, food and drink manufacturers understand that it is important they play their part to help conserve water to alleviate water shortages, or 'water stress'. Because of this FDF members are committed to making significant reductions in water use to help reduce stress on the nation's water supplies.

FDF and Envirowise have developed a joint initiative, the Federation House Commitment (FHC), which sets out five steps to enable food and drink companies to reduce water without compromising food safety and hygiene. The intention is to help reduce the food and drink industry's water use by 20% by 2020, compared with 2007.

Twenty-one FDF members with a combined turnover of £15 billion signed up to the Commitment when it was launched in January 2008. This first-wave of signatories is currently engaged with Envirowise as required and is making good progress against the five steps to success.

In July 2009 thirty six of the UK's leading food and drink manufacturers reported their first full year progress on the voluntary Federation House commitment (FHC) on water efficiency. Almost 500,000 cubic metres of water - equivalent to nearly 200 Olympic swimming pools - have already been saved. This marks the sector's first step towards achieving a 20% reduction in water use by 2020 (not including water embedded in products) compared to 2007.

Companies including Cranswick Food Group, Dairy Crest, Greenvale AP, Mars UK, R&R Ice Cream, United Biscuits, Walkers, and William Jackson Food Group have contributed to a collective reduction in water use of 1.7% during 2008. Together signatories will have saved almost £500,000 in the purchase of water alone (assuming all savings are towns water and an average of £1.05 per cubic metre is applied), not including the cost of water treatment and effluent disposal.

By signing up, signatories have promised they will work in a systematic way to reduce water use based on five steps to success as follows:

measuring how much water they used in 2007 to provide a 'baseline' of water use that will enable them to tell in future years if they are using less water.
measuring how much water they use at every factories they operate
developing action plans to reduce water at each of these factories
working to ensure those action plans are successful
providing progress reports every year to Envirowise about how much water they have saved.