San Miguel slashed water use by nearly 22% in last 6 years

MANILA,  Philippines  -Conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC) has saved more than 33.8 billion liters of water in the last six years, reducing its use of scarce water across its units by 21.65 percent as part of its “Water for All” initiative.

SMC said this was equivalent to the yearly consumption of over 94,000 households, or the monthly use of about 1.13 million families.

The company — whose businesses span food, drinks, power and infrastructure — saved around 6.4 billion liters in 2022 alone.

“Water issues have always been a priority for San Miguel, especially since much of our operations and all our communities depend on access to water,” Ramon S. Ang, SMC president and chief executive officer, said in a recent statement.

“This is why we have not let up on our efforts to continuously increase water savings at our facilities across the whole San Miguel group,” he added.

Local oil firm Petron Corp. topped the list of operating units with the most water savings amounting to more than 17 billion liters conserved since 2017.

This was on attributed to the company’s use of water desalination technology, a system that removes salt from seawater, at its cooling facilities in Limay, Bataan province.

Desalination accounted for the majority of the San Miguel group’s water reduction, with 2.8 billion liters of seawater collected in 2022.

San Miguel Global Power and Ginebra San Miguel were the next biggest water savers within the group, with 1.5 billion liters and 1.1 billion liters of water conserved last year, respectively.

SMC launched its “Water for All” sustainability initiative in 2017 and has since invested on programs and innovations in support of water recycling and reuse.

The initiative mandates a 50-percent reduction in utility water use across all SMC companies by 2025.

San Miguel’s newer plants now have built-in rainwater harvesting facilities, while older plants invest in rainwater catchment and collection systems.

Ang emphasized that SMC was lessening its dependence on scarce water sources, as it collected over 473 million liters of rainwater last year.

—Meg J. Adonis INQ

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