Nestlé Working to Achieve Water Efficiency

Water is vital to our operations, used for washing and processing raw materials, cooling and cleaning equipment, hygiene and our bottled water business. We continue to reduce, reuse and recycle water across our business through water-saving innovations and technologies. Altogether, our U.S. factories are withdrawing 10% less water per ton of product than they did five years ago.

Technologies we have already deployed successfully elsewhere to help address water scarcity are improving our water use efficiency in the United States, especially in California. Our “zero water” technology, pioneered at our dairy factory in Jalisco, Mexico, takes fresh cow’s milk, normally around 88% water, and heats it at low pressure to remove some of its water content. The resulting steam is then condensed, treated, purified and made available for a variety of uses.

Reusing water from the milk in this way reduces the need to extract groundwater for operations. Plans are underway at our facility in Modesto, California to transform this factory into a “zero water” factory. This transformation is projected to save nearly 63 million gallons of water annually. Nestlé has identified savings of more than 26 million gallons of water each year at our ice cream factories in Bakersfield and Tulare. At Nestlé Waters bottling plants in California, planned investments in conservation measures are projected to save 55 million gallons of water per year. Together, these initiatives will save 144 million gallons of water annually.

Read more stories from the 2015 Creating Shared Value Report