Using water wisely

PBG gets the drop on water conservation.

Sixty percent of our bodies is water. Seventy percent of the earth is covered with it.

Facts like these are driven deep into our brains–which, by the way, are between 77 and 78 percent water.

Water is equally vital to businesses. Manufacturing and mining, paper and petroleum, electronics and electric power generation, com- puter chips and even potato chips–these and scores of other industries all use large quantities of water in their daily operations.

But PBG is a beverage company. And so, in a sense, PBG is all about water. So it’s natural that PBG cares a lot about it–where it comes from, how much we use, how it’s used and how it’s conserved.

A little more than half of the water that PBG uses is bottled as the beverages that hundreds of millions of consumers around the world drink each year–whether for refreshment, hydration, wellness or energy. The rest of the water–about 47percent in 2007–is used primarily to clean, sanitize, heat and cool the company’s plants and equipment–much like other manufacturers use water.

A good analogy can be found in what happens when you take a glass of water from the faucet. First, you probably let the water run for a few seconds until it cools off. Then you fill the glass with water, drink some, dump the rest and use more water to wash and rinse the glass. By the time you’re done, you might have used 20 ounces of water but drank only 10.

In PBG terms, that would have given you a water usage ratio of 2.0, calculated by dividing 20 ounces used by 10 ounces consumed. In the U.S., PBG’s water usage ratio for 2007 was 1.83, down a little more than one percent from 2006.

For PBG, the reduction translates into a lot of water–280 million liters, or 73.7 million gallons–which is why the company is working hard to maintain that trend. The following stories describe some of the ways PBG is using water as productively as possible.

Pure efficiency

Reverse osmosis enables PBG to squeeze more quality and consistency out of every drop of water

Two of the most important things that people look for when making a purchase are quality and consistency. With beverages, they expect a favorite brand to taste as good and be as good as the one they had the day before, even if it was purchased on the other side of the world. Providing that quality and consistency depends on the quality of the water used to make the beverages.

One of the major reasons that Aquafina purified water is consistent in taste and quality is the sophisticated, seven-step filtration process implemented at PBG. And the most powerful steps in that process involve a hyper-filtration technology called reverse osmosis, or RO.

Quality quaffing

The PBG RO process produces water with a quality level far above what’s required for drinking water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, RO is so powerful it can strain individual molecules from water, turning salt water into fresh water and taking the color out of coffee. At PBG, RO is essential to filtering out salts, like sodium chloride, and other substances in water that can affect the purity, refreshment and taste of Aquafina.

When PBG first began using conventionally designed RO units some 20 to 25 percent of the water entering the units was sent down the drain. Recognizing an opportunity, PBG has since enhanced conventional RO design, making it more water-efficient and enabling us to reduce the amount of water sent down the drain to only 15 percent. Based on current production, the company conserves 280 million gallons of water in the U.S. each year.

That’s no drop in the bucket. It’s a year’s supply of drinking water for a million people.

RO: The new MO

Today, many PBG plants are equipped with these high-efficiency RO units, resulting in dramatic improvements in water conservation. For example, our Denver plant updated its RO system and conserved seven million gallons of water annually.

“Quality and consistency will always be major drivers for our business,” says Gina McElgunn, PBG’s Vice President of Quality. “But efficiency is another absolute, and reverse osmosis is one technology that scores big on all counts.”

*Answer: (C) 0.019%

?Did you know...*

Forty-three of PBG’s 44 plants in the U.S. use water from a public supply–one uses private wells, and two use both water from private wells and public supply.

Of the total withdrawals of fresh ground water in the U.S., how much is used in the production of bottled water?1

A  9%
B  2%
C  0.019%

1International Bottled Water Association

What you can do

  • Fix leaky faucets.
  • Cut back on outside watering. Landscape with grasses and plants that don’t require much watering.
  • Install water-conserving toilets, washing machines and shower heads.
  • Put a brick in the tank of old-style toilets (just be sure to place the brick where it won’t interfere with the flushing mechanisms).
  • Don’t let the water run before or while brushing your teeth.

Compressors that conserve

PBG is a company that runs not only on water but also on air.

Many of PBG’s machines that are used to move, fill, cap and package bottles require compressed air from air compressors that need to stay cool. In the past, PBG piped cold water through the compressors to keep the temperature down. The water would then travel down into the drain.

Tim Matson, Vice President of Manufacturing for PBG’s Central Business Unit says, “We wanted to find a way to cool the equipment without using water. So we teamed up with other PBG facilities in the region and invested in air-cooled replacement compressors that require no water at all. We saw a return on our investment immediately.”

In addition to decreasing water usage, the new compressors save about 56,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year–a six-percent reduction–which is enough to power five average U.S. households.