SMC eyes 50% cut in group’s water footprint

San Miguel Corp., the Philippines’ largest conglomerate, has unveiled an ambitious plan to cut water consumption across its wide spectrum of businesses by half by 2025 through measures that include water recycling, conservation and rainwater harvesting, among others.

A key element of the scheme is the use of a P474-million desalination plant by San Miguel unit Petron Corp. that is used to supply water to the newly expanded Bataan refining complex of the petroleum giant.

“San Miguel is going to set an example in its responsible use and management of water,” company president Ramon Ang said in a statement. “Many of our facilities are already efficient in terms of using water, but we can always do more. Given the scale of our need, we’re working to become more conscious about our water footprint.”

The plan to reduce the conglomerate’s “water footprint” coincides with World Water Day being marked on March 22.

San Miguel said it was rolling out an integrated water management system across its entire operations in an effort to further integrate sustainability into its business goals and processes.

Water is an essential ingredient to many of San Miguel’s brands. Beer—its flagship product— is 90-percent water, and liquor is around 85-percent water. Across the San Miguel group, water is used to clean, cool, heat, produce steam and pasteurize products. It is an important input to raw materials and packaging and major input to the power and oil refining industries.

A major component of San Miguel’s water strategy involves minimizing the amount of water it draws from groundwater sources through reusing and recycling process water and harvesting rainwater.

The company said it could also use surface runoff water (usually excess water generated during weather disturbances) from mountains, creeks and rivers and filter and store this for irrigation.

According to Ang, the first year of implementation would focus on establishing baseline information, data that would be then analyzed in terms of costs to the business and the amount used to see where the company could improve both in terms of efficiency and conservation.

Metering and establishing operating standards will be prioritized. Newer facilities have water meters per line and per process, but older facilities rely on only one meter for the entire plant. Installing separate water meters will make water audits relatively easier to perform, prevent wastage and improving efficiency.

Meanwhile, Petron’s RMP-2 plant in Limay, Bataan, is outfitted with the latest technology to reduce freshwater and groundwater consumption and minimize the environmental impact of wastewater discharge from its oil and gas operations. Much of the raw water used by RMP-2 comes from the sea through a state-of-the art desalination facility where salt water is processed into consumable water.
The desalination plant supplies 25 percent of the roughly 2,100 cubic meters per hour total water requirement of the refinery. An estimated 60 percent of the water the refinery uses goes to its boiler-houses to produce high-pressure steam.

While 67 percent of the water RMP-2 uses is cycled back into the operations before being returned to the sea, Ang’s challenge to refinery operators was to increase the amount of recycled water without sacrificing product quality.

“It can be done,” he said. “With technology in our newer facilities, we have enormous innovative capacity to tackle the challenge of water scarcity and create positive water impact.”