Learn more about Nestlé Waters North America's Product Value Chain
As a company dependent on clean, water supplies to make our products, Nestlé Waters is committed to responsible water management and to working collaboratively with the communities where we do business.
Our spring sources are developed and managed for long term sustainability and we have processes in place to help us manage these sites responsibly. A number of factors are evaluated upfront to identify appropriate spring sites including water flow volumes, water quality, the recharge area that replenishes the source, other uses of the source and of course taste. Our ten full time Natural Resource Managers, trained hydrogeologists and engineers monitor our spring sources and manage them for long term sustainability. Additionally:
- In developing our spring water sites, we typically conserve numerous acres of the surrounding land as open space around the spring sources. The land helps protect not only the sources, but also the biodiversity of the area. Today approximately, 87% of the land around our spring sources, roughly equaling 14,000 acres, is managed by us and not developed which is an environmental benefit to the local community.
- We collect at least one year's worth of data on water flow before filing for permits.
- When the water is pumped, monitoring devices are used to measure water levels.
- We’re working with community groups to further develop and make our site selection process more transparent. Today, nearly all of our bottled water products list the sources on their labels and we make quality reports available for each.
Water used for Nestlé Pure Life® Purified Water starts as either well water or municipal tap water and then goes through extensive purification processes including reverse osmosis. Minerals are then added back for better taste.
We operate 28 bottling facilities and 69 branch offices throughout the U.S. and Canada (as of 2011). Today, our research shows that our bottled water has the lightest environmental footprint per unit of product in the packaged beverage industry. We are undertaking a number of initiatives to further reduce our manufacturing and logistics footprint and continue to make progress toward our goal of reducing carbon intensity by 20 percent by 2013.
Nestlé Waters North America was one of the first food or beverage manufacturer (non-alcholic) to build plants that adhere to the stringent Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for sustainability. To date, nine of our factories meet LEED requirements. Some characteristics of LEED-certified food or beverage plants include the use of nontoxic building materials and maintenance, a design that enables water efficiency, better mechanisms for waste reduction, minimal impact exterior lighting, and constructed wetlands on-site.
But our efforts go beyond our LEED facilities:
- In 2010, we reduced our total energy consumption throughout our operations by 3.8% vs. 2009. Longer term, we will identify short- and long-term opportunities for deploying renewable energy sources in our operations. We are currently exploring renewable energy in select sites, including the installation of solar panels in our Allentown, PA plant.
- We produce 98% of our bottles in our own plants, which eliminates the transport of empty bottles. This saves an estimated 6.6 million gallons of fuel, while eliminating 6,200 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually.
- In 2010, we reduced water consumption organization wide by 1.6% vs. 2009 even though our production volume increased.
- We manage our waste streams to minimize the need for solid waste disposal. In 2010, we recycled 98% of our solid waste (a 4.3% improvement). In our direct delivery branches, our three- and five-gallon containers are typically reused 20-25 times during their life span. At the end of their useful lives, these jugs are recycled and repurposed into other plastic goods.
- We are working to introduce hydrogen fuel cell forklifts and hybrid trucks in our manufacturing facilities. We're currently participating in the largest collaborative heavy-duty hybrid truck project in the nation. The project will enable our Nestlé Waters Direct business to purchase 25 environmentally friendly vehicles. Each of the new trucks is expected to deliver a 25% improvement in fuel economy.
At Nestlé Waters, we know that a smaller footprint has to start with less packaging. So we've assessed design and materials and made a concerted effort to reduce all the primary and secondary packaging materials we use in our products.
With the introduction of our next generation Eco-Shape® bottle, we have reduced the amount of PET plastic by 60%, saving 260 million pounds of plastic per year. We’ve reduced the size of our labels by as much as 35%, saving 10 million pounds of paper annually. And we’ve developed a bottle cap that is a mere 1 gram in weight. These, along with numerous other innovations, have enabled us to not only reduce the size of our packages, but also to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and our impact on landfills.
Our efforts to promote recycling will drive further improvement in the future. Today, PET plastic water bottles represent only one-third of one percent of the total solid waste stream in the U.S., but we think that none of this packaging should be thrown away and we are working to get all of our bottles recycled.
An important part of improving our impact is to take a look at how we use the roads.
To start, we increased the volume of product in each truck, reducing the number of vehicles on the road and miles traveled. We added diesel-electric hybrid trucks and hydrogen fuel cell forklifts to our fleets. And instead of shipping empty bottles from an outside source, we produce 98% of our bottles in our plants, saving 6.6 million gallons of fuel each year.
Nestlé Waters started investing in hybrid vehicles in 2008. Now we’re participating in the largest collaborative heavy-duty hybrid truck project in the nation. The project will enable our Nestlé in the nation. The project will enable Nestlé Waters to purchase 25 environmentally friendly vehicles. Each one of the new trucks is expected to deliver 25% improvement in fuel economy.
Additionally, for our Home and Office Division, we use sophisticed software to plan our deliveries to maximize the route density and minimize energy use. This enables us to eliminate miles traveled, saving 167,404 gallons of fuel per year. For our contract carriers, we designed distribution routes to be as short as possible, while having the least impact on local communities.
We’ve always been regionally focused. Today, 90% of our product is shipped directly to retailers eliminating the need for warehouse storage – and additional driving miles. Our focus on regional distribution has helped us avoid 11,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually. We’ve also started introducing hybrid delivery vehicles into our fleet.
Because we have regional distribution chains, we're able to ship directly to the customer as much as possible, eliminating warehouse storage as well as cutting the number of miles needed for transportation. We see this as an advantage over having one national location, which would require more frequent shipments and more transportation miles, both of which would increase CO2 emissions.
Recycling is the cornerstone of a sustainable approach and our PET bottles are 100% recyclable. But today, approximately 30% of U.S. housholds do not have curbside recycling and less than 30% of all PET plastic beverage bottles are being recycled in the U.S. We are committed to reversing this trend by helping to improve recycling and reducing the amount of waste we generate through in-house recycling programs. There is a growing demand for recycled PET plastic resin, which can be repurposed to make fleece, carpet, and even new plastic bottles.
Nestlé Waters is using recycled plastic in two of our brands:
Resource®
In the U.S., our newest brand, Resource®, was the first national bottled spring water brand to use 25% recycled plastic in all of its bottles. Resource was developed to actively educate and engage consumers through on-pack information and recycling incentives. Today, we've increased the recycled plastic content of our Resource bottles to 50%. Each recycled Resource bottle is used to produce items such as new plastic beverage bottles, fleece, reusable shopping bags, carpet, and other products.
Making bottles from bottles makes good sense, but we need to get them back. We are advocating and promoting recycling programs throughout the country to achieve that.
Montclair®
In April 2010, Nestlé Waters Canada reintroduced its Montclair® Natural Spring Water, Canada's oldest water brand, in a bottle made of 100% recycled plastic.
Reflecting a full-circle use of plastic beverage containers, each Montclair bottle serves as an educational vehicle to inform consumers about the importance of recycling and demonstrates how recycled plastic can be reused repeatedly to create new products. After an empty bottle is collected, through the recycling process, the plastic is ground into flakes, cleaned and processed to remove contaminants. Then it is repelletized into post consumer PET which we purchase to form new plastic bottles for our Montclair rPET.
Expanding Our Use of Recycled Plastic
In Spring 2011, our Deer Park® brand introduced 50% recycled PET (rPET) half -liter bottles in our Baltimore and Washington D.C. markets. The bottle has a “made with 50% recycled plastic�? graphic icon to educate consumers that recycling can provide material for new bottles and other products. Making bottles with recycled plastic reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 25% on average, compared to making the bottles from all new materials.
With this pilot initiative, we are able to bottle nearly a quarter of our Deer Park retail volume in the new 50% rPET packaging. As recycling rates increase, we anticipate that we’ll be able to broaden the use of recycled plastic in our Deer Park bottles (and ultimately our other brands), but currently there isn’t enough high quality rPET available to accomplish this goal. To that end, we're also working to improve recycling accessibility by working with organizations such as Keep America Beautiful to place recycling bins in public spaces where people can dispose of empty bottles while away from home.
Join us in our effort to recycle as much as possible! Every bottle helps!
Seeing Green: Take a Tour of One of Our LEED Facilities
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Environmental Metrics for Manufacturing Facilities
Focusing on sustainability has helped us make key improvements in our facilities. Since 2008, these changes have helped us decrease our footprint, while our overall volume has actually increased by 5%. For example:
- Through lightweighting, among other projects, we’ve decreased our material consumption by 6%.
- Through improvements to both our supply chain and efficiency, we’ve trimmed our energy use (per liter) by 13% and our water use (per liter) by 1%.
- Through changing our utility setup, we’ve discontinued using natural gas on-site to produce electricity.
- Through a variety of changes, we’re now recycling facility solid waste at a rate of 98% for 2010 (that’s up 13% from 2008). And our actual waste sent to landfills has decreased 75% from these efforts.
Nestlé Waters North America Key Metric Tracking 2008-2010
| Key Performance Indicators | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 |
| Total Water Use (liters) | 15,681,272,000 | 15,445,326,000 | 16,274,283,000 |
| Water Use Intensity (liters/liter) | 1.40 | 1.38 | 1.39 |
| Energy Use (kWh) | 910,429,328 | 866,477,778 | 826,451,806 |
| Energy Use Intensity (kWh/liter) | 0.081 | 0.077 | 0.071 |
| GHG Emissions **(tons) | 55,633 | 51,948 | 35,197 |
| GHG Emissions Intensity (kg/liter) | 0.0045 | 0.0042 | 0.0027 |
| Packaging Material Use (tons) | 495,739 | 487,712 | 464,063 |
| Solid Waste (tons) | 23,604 | 27,861 | 33,485 |
| Solid Waste Recycled (tons) | 20,350 | 26,193 | 32,695 |
