Despite a significant growth in beer production in the past five years, Kompania Piwowarska has reduced its annual water consumption by nearly a million cubic metres. The company uses barely 3.38 Hl of water per one Hl of beer which is the best result among all SABMiller breweries.
Water stress and quality are increasingly important issues directly affecting SABMiller as brewing beer uses lots of water in the production process and in growing the crops that it relies on. Moreover, some of SABMiller breweries are already in regions of water scarcity.
A challenging target
This is why water has been included into SABMiller’s 10 sustainable development priorities. As a group, the company has set itself a challenging target of reducing water consumption by 25% by 2015. This initiative will save around 20 billion litres of water every year by 2015 - enough to fill eight thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools.
“In a world with increasing water shortages we need to operate as effectively as possible, at the same time cooperating with communities to protect water resources”, said Graham Mackay, SABMiller CEO.
Watch a film on water saving
Key facts
- By 2025, the UN predicts that more than 3 billion people won’t have enough water to live on. This holds true for some of SABMiller’s clients and employees as well as local communities
- In F10 SABMiller’s global average was 4.3 litres of water to make 1 litre of beer, with regional variations from 7.1 litres (in Africa) to 3.38 litre in Poland (Kompania Piwowarska).
- The UN suggests that each person needs 20-50 litres of safe freshwater a day to ensure their basic needs for drinking, cooking and cleaning.
- In Africa each person uses on average only 47 litres of water per day, in Asia the figure is 85 litres per day. In contrast, water use in the UK is estimated at 334 litres per day, in the US 578 litres per day and in Poland at 150 litres a day.
- Water scarcity already affects every continent. Around 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world’s population, live in areas of physical scarcity, and 500 million people are approaching this situation.
- The World Health Organisation suggests that every day approximately 4 thousand children die from diseases related to water shortages. Statistically, a child dies every 20 seconds.
- A running tap uses 6 litres of water a minute, a shower can use anywhere between 9 – 45 litres per minute. A hosepipe uses as much as 1000 litres per hour – that’s over 6 barrels of beer.
- Fixing a dripping tap can save as much as 5000 litres a year – that’s over 15,000 small bottles of Tyskie beer or 30 barrels of beer.
- Toilet flushing accounts for up to 30% of daily water use – with old toilets using as much as 14 litres per flush compared to new dual flush models which use as little as 2.6 and 4 litres per flush.
With the above mentioned facts in mind, SABMiller and Kompania Piwowarska focus even more on water issues and encourage their business partners and consumers to save water.
How does KP save water?
Since water is one of our 10 sustainable development priorities, our water strategy takes a holistic, whole value chain approach, and is built around the ‘5Rs of Water Responsibility’ (pRotect, Reduce, Re-use, Recycle and Redistribute).
Water
The water consumption ratio includes direct and indirect water footprint(i.e. from growing the crops to the production process, distribution and recycling of beer bottles). Water consumption in a company is referred to as the total volume of fresh water used directly or indirectly to manufacture the company’s goods and supply services.
In cooperation with WWF (World Water Forum), Kompania Piwowarska has developed a “Water Consumption Tool” with the goal of calculating water consumption in the company’s value chains. This tool employs an Excel sheet and places special emphasis on the agricultural elements of supplies.
Sewage and biogas – pure energy
Klaudyna Gruszecka, Environmental Protection and Work Safety Manager for Kompania Piwowarska explained: “Sewage from breweries is bio-degradable. They have a higher concentration of organic substances than municipal sewage; it is usually characterised with parameters like chemical oxygen demand and suspension. Organic contamination comes from the raw materials, product losses, organic waste contacting sewage and from washing agents. We make constant efforts to reduce these contaminants in sewage.”
Biogas is a by-product of initial sewage treatment in the Tychy brewery; it is a combination of approx. 83% of methane and hydrogen sulphide). From the point of view of environmental protection, use of biogas as a renewable energy source is very beneficial. It enjoys far smaller emissions than does e.g. coal or fuel oil. Now biogas covers approximately 12-15% of the Tychy brewery’s general heat consumption.
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Kompania Piwowarska - Leader of the beer industry in Poland
Kompania Piwowarska - leader of the Polish beer industry Kompania Piwowarska is the largest brewer in Poland. Hundreds of years of experience in brewing, state-of-the-art technology and rigorous adherence to the ‘world class manufacturing’ principles guarantee the highest quality beer. The company's brand portfolio includes best selling Polish beers, such as Tyskie, Żubr, Lech, Dębowe Mocne, Redd's as well as international premium brands: Pilsner Urquell, Grolsch and Peroni Nastro Azzurro. Kompania Piwowarska, established in 1999, operates three breweries (in Tychy, Poznań and Białystok) and fourteen depots across the country. Kompania Piwowarska is engaged in a number of social programs, addressing poverty based social exclusion as well as eduactional programs promoting responsibility and moderation in alcohol consumption. In the fiscal year F09, ended on 31 March 2010, KP sales volume amounted to 14.6 mill hectoliters.
SABMiller – one of the largest brewers in the world.
Kompania Piwowarska is part of SABMiller plc. SABMiller plc is one of the world's largest brewers with brewing interests or distribution agreements across six continents. The group's wide portfolio of brands includes premium international beers such as Grolsch, Miller Genuine Draft, Peroni Nastro Azzurro and Pilsner Urquell, as well as market-leading local brands such as Aquila, Castle, Miller Lite, Snow and Tyskie. SABMiller is also one of the largest Coca Cola bottlers outside the US. In the year ended on 31 March 2009 the group reported US$ 3.4 billion in adjusted pre-tax profit and group revenue of US$ 25.3 billion. SABMiller plc is listed on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges.
Inquiries:
Katarzyna Wilczewska
Public Affairs Manager
KOMPANIA PIWOWARSKA SA
katarzyna.wilczewska@kp.sabmiller.com
Landline: +48 61 667 77 65
Mobile: +48 601 887 966
