SMC ‘ahead of schedule’ to halve water use by 2025
A year ago, San Miguel Corp. (SMC) promised that it would reduce its “water footprint” by cutting its group-wide consumption of the increasingly precious liquid by half in a span of eight years.
It was a tall order for the country’s largest conglomerate that needs water for everything from producing its iconic San Miguel Beer, cooling its Sual power plant, producing petroleum at Petron’s Bataan refinery or mixing cement for its Skyway infrastructure project.
But 12 months after launching its ambitious initiative, the publicly listed firm said it had, so far, already saved 4 billion liters of water—an amount which is more than half of its midpoint target, and a point that was originally not expected to be reached until 2020.
To put that number into perspective, San Miguel said this was equivalent to the daily use of about 137,000 households a year. This represents a water use reduction of 14 percent across its food, beverage, packaging, power, fuels and petrochemicals and infrastructure businesses.
“This is more than half of our mid-point goal of 20 percent reduction by year 2020, and we’re only just beginning,” San Miguel president Ramon Ang said in a statement released during the World Water Day last week.
“We’re pleased with these results and we’re eager to reduce it further,” he added, referring to the ambitious scheme under the group’s “Project 50×2025” plan.
Most of the reduction came from the substitution of water sourced from the ground, from surface sources, and water district supply, to sea water—reducing the company’s use of scarce water supply.
“The first year has been about instilling a culture of conservation among our employees, and improving water systems and processes, where possible,” Ang said. “From now through 2020, our goal is to cut as much as we can by improving water management, utilizing rainwater harvesting, and increasing the amount of water we recycle and re-use.”
The scheme also calls for San Miguel to retrofit older facilities with more efficient water systems. Meanwhile, all new facilities being built under the current capacity expansion program will adopt features that make them water and energy efficient.
Ang said that the company was also studying new water technologies that it could invest in, after 2020, in order to fully realize its ambitious 2025 goal.
“We can expect even better results in the coming months and years, as our subsidiaries continue to implement the various programs they’ve identified to support this group-wide goal,” he said.
Also part of the company’s long-term sustainability goals is its decision to discontinue its plastic bottled water business to help reduce plastic waste. This initiative will have no bearing on its target water savings.
While production of bottled water has already stopped, San Miguel expects to complete its exit from this business sometime after the middle of this year, when excess inventory in the market would have been completely depleted.
Last month, the company also reported that construction for its Bulacan bulk water supply project was ahead of schedule.
Once complete, the facility will provide safe and reliable water supply to an estimated 541,000 households in 24 water districts or 569 barangays in the province of Bulacan at what the company says will be “the lowest cost per cubic meter anywhere in the country.”
Aside from addressing the water shortage in the province, this project will also address environmental concerns arising from the use of deep wells, which results in high salinity and rapid degradation of groundwater supply.
