Conserving water

Givaudan

Givaudan has set a target of reducing municipal and ground water per tonne of production by 15 per cent by 2020.

Even though the company improved its water efficiency per tonne of product by 10 per cent from 2009 to 2010, huge amounts of water are still required for cleaning and cooling. And while economies of scale are possible when it comes to cleaning, as production rises it’s not always possible with cooling.

However, consumption can still be reduced in other areas for example:

At Sant Celoni in Spain simply by using ‘eliminated by-products’ rather than fresh solvents, the same level of cleanliness was achieved. The move now saves the plant €129,000 every year and reduces waste reduction by 100 tonnes.
Fitting motion sensors that detected movement near urinals in men’s bathrooms saved more than 81,000 litres of water annually at Givaudan’s Ashford site in the UK. Water use was cut by 75 per cent and they were rolled out across the plant. New urinals at the Cuernavaca plant in Mexico saved the operation 151,000 litres of water per year.
An employee awareness week lead by the Green Team at Bromborough, UK, saw a water use reduced by 19 per cent.
A partnership between Unilever and Givaudan at Jaguare, Sao Paulo, Brazil saw a reduction of 100,000 litres of water in nine months and nine tonnes of CO2 by reorganising production batches.

IFF

International Flavors & Fragrances Inc (IFF) committed to reduce water use by 10 per cent per metric ton of production by 2012 against a 2007 baseline, but by 2010 that target had already been surpassed and a decrease of 14 per cent was recorded.

Examples of water reduction measures across IFF worldwide include:

At IFF’s flavours plant in Chennai, India, where water is precious, the company installed a system to catch rainfall from the site’s 60,000-square-foot roof and divert it into the groundwater raising the water table. A similar system has also been installed at the company’s nearby fragrance plant.
At IFF’s fragrance ingredients facility in Zhejiang, China, the plant collects steam condensate from the heating system and uses the water for cleaning, saving 16,500 metric tons of water, 3,500 gigajoules of energy. The plant also uses recycling processes that reduce wastewater by 1,500 metric tons per year.
In 2010, at IFF’s flavours and fragrances facility near Mexico City, the company began using grey wastewater for landscape irrigation saving 400,000 litres of water a year. Additionally, The installation of low-flow fixtures now saves more than a million litres of water per year and water use has been cut by 2.5 per cent.

Symrise

Symrise aims to reduce its water consumption per product unit sold by a third in relation to 2010 values. Examples of improvements include:

At Symrise’s German plant in Holzminden, the wastewater system has been completely modernised and regular training seminars introduced for employees.
A SRMS production management system introduced in China has led to better control of material feeding quantity while meters ensure better water consumption monitoring.
In Chile new cleaning procedures have been introduced and training procedures initiated to optimise water use.
Symrise has introduced ‘Total Productive Maintenance’ a concept run by employees that identifies process inefficiencies and finds solutions that save resources. Since 2007 more than 1,400 improvements have been introduced.