Zhou Zhi Hua 2002 2001 In 1999, Shanghai Asia Pacific Brewery in China was using more than 9 litres of water to brew one litre of beer. Old and defective equip ment and lack of facilities for reusing the waste water from the brewery were to blame. PUTTING WATER TOGOODUSE 'We had water meters installed because we needed to know which part of the brewery was using an unusually large volume of water,' says Zhou Zhi Hua, who was in charge of the brewery's water-saving programme at the time. 'Only then could we start thinking of solutions.'The meters revealed that the pipes underneath the brewery were corrod ed and were losing a huge amount of water. Installing a new piping system above ground solved this problem and helped the brewery reduce its potable water consumption by 51,000 cubic metres a year, enough to meet the annual water demand of 1,000 people in a developed country. The meters also showed how much potable water was being used to remove sulphur dioxide from the emissions from the boiler installation. But it is not necessary to use drinking water to scrub the gas, so the brewery started using its caustic waste water to do this job, thereby reducing its drinking water consumption by a further 41,000 cubic metres a year. Another area where monitoring helped the brewery to make progress was the waste water treatment plant. In 1998, the company installed modern, computerised equipment to regulate water flow in the plant, replacing the local manual system. This investment alone reduced the brewery's consumption of potable water by another 48,000 cubic metres a year. Technology can take you a long way, but it is equally important to involve the employees in the brewery's drive to reduce water usage, says Zhou Zhi Hua. As partof Heineken's Aware of Water pro gramme, the Shanghai brewery held work shops to raise employee awareness and show them how to achieve the same results using less water. One idea for saving water was to sweep up broken glass with a broom instead of washing it away with a hose. Another was to fit nozzles to hoses to reduce their outlet diameter. 'We trained our people and asked them to optimise the use of water in their work,' he explains. The many improvements have paid off. The Shanghai brewery now produces 40 per cent more beer than it did in 1999, but with one big difference: it is using 40 percent less water - five litres of water to produce one litre of beer. Specific water consumption breweries performance ofHeineken world-wide, in hi water/hi beer 2006 2005 2004 2003 5 4 target actual 23

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Heineken - Milieuverslag | 2002 | | pagina 101