Water Efficiency

The food and drink manufacturing industry is a significant user of water. Water is an essential ingredient in many food and drink products. It is also used in food and drink preparation, production and cleaning processes. However, food and drink manufacturers understand that it is important they play their part to help conserve water to alleviate water shortages, or 'water stress'. Because of this FDF members are committed to making significant reductions in water use to help reduce stress on the nation's water supplies.

With the help of water efficiency experts Envirowise, FDF has developed something called the Federation House Commitment, which sets out five steps to enable food and drink companies to reduce water without compromising food safety and hygiene. The intention is to help reduce the food and drink industry's water use by 20% by 2020, compared with 2007. So far, 21 UK food and drink manufacturers have signed up to the initiative. They have promised they will:

1) measure how much water they used in 2007 to provide a 'baseline' of water use that will enable them to tell in future years if they are using less water.

2) measure how much water they use at every factories they operate

3) developing action plans to reduce water at each of these factories

4) work hard to ensure those action plans are successful

5) Provide progress reports every year to Envirowise about how much water they have saved.

Envirowise has estimated that if all UK food and drink companies signed up to the Federation House Commitment then the initiative could save 140 million litres of water a per day – enough to fill 56 Olympic-size swimming pools.