Reducing water use

Our global commitment is to establish Coca-Cola Enterprises as a water sustainable operation by 2020.  In doing so, we aim to minimise our water use and have a water neutral impact on the local communities in which we operate.  This means safely returning the equivalent to the amount we use in our beverages and their production to these communities and their environment.

With these commitments in mind, we have undertaken a variety of initiatives across our GB operations.

Monitoring and Targeting

One of the main ways we reduce water use is by close monitoring exactly what we use, so we've installed water meters at all of our manufacturing sites. Along with a range of best practice initiatives we've reduced our water usage ratio, since 2007, by 22% at Sidcup; 12% at Edmonton; 7% at East Kilbride and 10% at Wakefield.

Sidcup Water Reduction

At the Sidcup manufacturing site, our team has carried out a detailed analysis of water use by the production lines by fitting around 45 individual water meters.  These are monitored on a weekly basis to evaluate use, identify trends and spot opportunities.

The team at Sidcup has also extended the monitoring further and has installed a range of manual meters to help measure water usage in more detail within the canning production line.  The metering tools have helped the site to target areas for improvement, and to measure the impact of any changes.

This system has proved invaluable in a number of cases.  For example a major water leak was identified through a mass balance exercise comparing the incoming water supply to the sum of the individual meters.  The water saving was more than 500m3 per week.

As a result of these and other improvements the Sidcup team has reduced the amount of wasted water by 15% in the past 12 months and has plans to make further improvements in the future.

Schweppes Abbey Well water usage

Schweppes Abbey Well is the official bottled water of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is bottled at our recently acquired manufacturing site at Morpeth. In 2010 its water use ratio was 1.74 litres per litre of product produced, which is some way off our overall GB ratio of 1.36 litres per litre of product.

As a result, we've set ourselves a challenge to reduce water use to 1.2 litres per litre produced by the start of London 2012. Detailed monitoring of water use at the site is well underway and reduction plans are falling into place.

In the first four months of the project, the 12-month water use ratio has already been reduced to 1.58 litres per litre of drinks produced.