Environmental impact
Water usage
Where possible we recycle water from one use to the next
Water is crucial to our production process, both as an ingredient and a process aid for cleaning and sterilising. The management of its quality is of paramount importance.
All our factories are committed to reducing the amount of water we use for processing, heating, cooling and washing. Where possible we recycle water from one use to the next through closed systems or other water saving initiatives.
By using these new methods at our Widford factory, we have saved around 1,000kg of steam per hour, reduced our water usage by 62%, and cut our CO2 emissions by at least 19 tonnes per annum.
We have similar water saving initiatives at our other production sites. For example, a team at our Leeds factory managed to save 25m litres of water each year on just one production line.
They identified two ways of adapting the existing machinery with some simple devices at a cost of just £750. Not all opportunities are so straightforward but our teams continue to investigate improvements wherever they can be found.
Since 2002, we have reduced our overall water-to-product ratio* by 17.7%.
We were one of the first companies to sign up in January 2008 to an industry action plan - the Federation House Commitment - to cut water usage by 20% by 2020.
