In response to water scarcity and a desire to stimulate similar innovation across its businesses, Nestlé S.A., which is headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, and has operations in 197 countries with 339,000 employees, has expanded its dairy factory in Jalisco, Mexico, transforming it into the company’s first “zero water” manufacturing site in the world, meaning that the plant will not use any local freshwater resources for its operations—including plant cleaning. Over the last 60 years, water availability per person has declined drastically in Mexico due to population growth. Operating in a water-stressed area, it made sense to introduce technology that saves 1.6 million liters of groundwater per day, which is important for the continued well-being of local populations.
The company installed new processes and equipment at the “Cero Agua” (Zero Water) factory, discussed below, which enable it to use recycled water from its dairy operations.
A Fragile Resource
The water resource savings are equivalent to 1.6 million liters, or enough water to meet the average daily consumption of 6,400 people in Mexico.
“In Mexico, and around the world, water is a vital and fragile resource,” says Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke. “Due to the relevance of water in the production of food and its role in the preservation of life, Nestlé worldwide will continue to pursue initiatives that contribute to the maintenance [of] and access to natural resources.”
The Cero Agua dairy factory takes fresh cow’s milk, normally around 88 percent water, and heats it at low pressure to remove some of its water content. The resulting steam is then condensed and treated and used to clean the evaporating machines themselves.
Once the machines have been flushed out, the water is then collected once more, purified and recycled a second time.
The water can then be reused for watering gardens or cleaning.
Reusing water from the milk in this way removes the need to extract groundwater for operations. The amount of groundwater that the Cero Agua dairy saves each day amounts to roughly 15 percent of the total water used by the company in Mexico each year in its factories, operations and offices.
Such water savings are part of its efforts to promote “conservation, treatment, recycling and water efficiency in our operations and among farmers, suppliers and other partners in our supply chain,” says Marcelo Melchior, who heads Nestlé Mexico.
The Cero Agua project is just one of a number of water-saving initiatives the company has introduced at its factories around the world in recent years.
These have allowed the company to reduce total water withdrawal per ton of product by 37 percent globally over the past 10 years while increasing production.
Worldwide, Nestlé aims to further reduce its water withdrawal per ton of product to achieve an overall reduction of 40 percent by 2015 (see “Nestlé and Water Stewardship Quick Facts”).
Applications at Home and Abroad
Nestlé plans to replicate this approach in other factories globally. For example, it has plans to convert dairy factories in Modesto, CA, and South Africa to zero water.
In the U.S.: In May 2015, Nestlé, which has more than 7,000 employees in California (which includes Nestlé USA, Nestlé Waters North America and Nestlé Purina PetCare), announced that it had invested $7 million in phase I of the Modesto factory. It also unveiled water-saving projects in five water bottling plants and three other facilities in the drought-plagued state.
Nestlé and Water Stewardship Quick Facts
• Nestlé currently has more than 376 water-saving projects in its factories, saving 1.8 million m3
• 7.5 million m3 of water were recycled or reused within company operations in 2014
• Nestlé has reduced water withdrawals by 37.3 percent per ton of production since 2005
• Water discharges per ton of product have been reduced by 52 percent since 2005