SABMiller shares water footprint insights

Manufacturers can be big users of water, but the more progressive ones are looking at ways to trim that use while sharing best practices for measurement and reduction.  Last week, I wrote about Intel’s water management efforts, but another company taking water management seriously is SABMiller.

The company has teamed with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to publish a report about water footprints conducted for two of its brewery operations. The footprint effort–covering a brewery operation in the Czech Republic, and another based in South Africa–considers the water impact of the entire value chain including crop production, not just brewing and bottling. The report gives a complete breakdown on the details, but the point that sticks out to me is that the vast majority of water use for beer occurs in producing and processing the crops. So the report is worth a look to gain insight on how a consumer goods giant is thinking about water use supply-chain wide.

Also, with water, it’s important to consider the impact on the local region. As the report notes, “a water footprint must not only look at the total water use in litres of water per unit of product across the value chain, but must also consider where that water is used, what proportion that water use represents of the total resource in that area, and whether this proportion of water use presents risks to the environment, to communities, or to business, now or in the future.”

Other companies also have made efforts to gauge the broader sustainability footprint of a product–for instance,  see this New York Times’ article about as PepsiCo’s effort to track the supply-chain wide carbon impact of producing Tropicana orange juice. Sure, such studies aren’t practical for smaller manufacturers, but for some large, branded companies, they can point to sustainability impacts from sourcing, logistics, or manufacturing decisions that previously were unknown or undocumented.

Knowing and measuring those broader impacts is the starting point for improvement efforts that will help the environment–and from a bottom line perspective–help capture green-conscious consumers. For suppliers to big companies, these footprint efforts point to the interest that large companies have in greening the value chain,  quite possibly including the materials or services you provide to them.