We have reduced our consumption of water by 10% between 2006 and 2007. Our business used approximately 9 million tonnes of water in 2007 compared with 10 million in 2006 . In 2007 was to ensure that all “water scarce” sites have reduction programmes in place. We have now strengthened our commitment to include all our sites.
Our Asia Pacific region is leading activity in this area and is helping to inform wider development. Australia and India are the lead countries. We are sharing lessons from the Asia Pacific region through workshops in the first half of 2008. We have also developed a water management toolkit to share good practice across the business.
Water actions already taken include:
• Our Huntingwood site in Australia was awarded a Sydney Water Innovation Award for introducing waterless lubrication in its production. This has now been introduced across 12 lines in Australia and New Zealand, saving tens of millions of litres of water a year.
• Cadbury India aims for a goal of zero water discharge. Our Bangalore factory has harvested, cleaned and filtered rainwater for recharging the aquifer, providing assistance for 40% of the population dependant on groundwater. The factory has implemented two forms of capturing this water for recovery and re-use from the 60 hectare site. The storm water from the roof of the factory is collected and is re-used directly into cooling towers and boilers.
Rainwater Harvesting at our Ringwood factory in Australia
• In 2007, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) along with the State's Waste Management and Research Center (WMRC) honoured Cadbury in Rockford, United States for developing a non-contact system to provide cooling water to process equipment. Using this system in the three chiller cooling towers means discharge to the sanitary district has been reduced by more than 8 million gallons at a saving of 13 million dollars.
• Cadbury UK has invested in an onsite wastewater treatment plant in our cocoa processing site in Chirk, United Kingdom, to clean up effluent arising from manufacturing processes. This has led to savings of approximately 17 million litres per annum. As a result, water consumption on site has reduced by 15% per year and we have identified opportunities to increase this to 50%. Similar technologies are being deployed in sites in Europe, Russia and Mexico and work is being done to understand the potential for recycling in each case.
• At our Valladolid factory in Spain we have installed systems to help us recycle the water used in the vacuum systems on site and at our facility in Beirut moving to dryer cleaning methods has reduced the site water consumption by 11%.