Treat the water we discharge effectively

We are committed to developing our business in a way that helps safeguard the environment. As such, we have set new and strengthened requirements for water quality and effluent discharge in all our factories to be implemented from 2016.

Our progress

We continuously invest to reduce water discharged to the environment and to improve our waste water treatment facilities to ensure we meet local legislation or our own internal standards, whichever is more stringent.

For example, an innovative new system – the oxycon biological treatment and effluent polishing plant – was recently installed at our Douala factory in Cameroon to filter waste water from our operations. As a result, it ensures that only clean water is returned to the environment and produces minimal chemical oxygen demand.

In order to increase manufacturing efficiency, as well as reduce energy consumption and water withdrawal, we invested CHF 9.2 million in 2015 in a new evaporator at our coffee factory in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. New technology in the evaporator reduced its steam usage, saving 6% of water used at the factory in 2015.

In the same time frame, a pilot Waste Water Treatment Programme (WWTP) was developed by Nestlé and an industrial water treatment company to provide classroom and on-site training, coaching and technical support to employees at our Agbara and Flowergate factories in Nigeria, the Tema site in Ghana and the Yopougon facility in Côte d’Ivoire.

The programme – which looks to standardise our operations, provide accurate waste water analysis and reaffirm compliance at all our sites – will run until the end of 2016 and will be evaluated with an aim to continuing the initiative in the long term.

In Ghana, we invested CHF 1.1 million in an Ultra Filtration-Reverse Osmosis system at our Tema factory to improve the quality of waste water. The system also enables us to reuse 30% of WWTP effluent for non-core activities, reducing the total factory water consumption by 10%.