NESTLE

SOLUTION TO WATER CONSUMPTION & PACKAGING PROBLEM TO ENSURE SUSTAINABILITY

| Maleeha Tarannum

Background:
The latter part of the Twentieth century saw an increasing concern for the environment. The concept of sustainable development has become the buzz word which talks about integrated development of economy, environment and society. World governments are increasingly realizing their responsibility to develop and implement shared solutions to global environmental issues. Nestl S.A. the world's largest food company, provides consumers with the best food throughout their lives. Their tagline is Good Food, Good Life. Preserving environment is a must for Nestle as it promises good life. In 1996 the Nestl Environmental Management System (NEMS) was introduced which consolidates all environmental measures taken by the Nestl Group. They are continuously working for sustainable development. Nestle has already taken many steps to preserve environment. However, there are still problems like preserving water and adverse impact of packaging. This article will show how water consumption and packaging can be a threat to sustainable business. In addition with this, suggestions regarding how these problems can be faced will be discussed.

Water Consumption as a threat to Sustainable Business:

Nestls world-wide operations utilize just 0.006% per year of the total estimated fresh water withdrawal. Perrier Vittel, Nestls bottled water division, uses only 10% of this amount, i.e. 0.0006%. However, all large global corporation like Nestl when consumes water from nature, few amount of water from natural resources used by individual organization is enough to accumulate to a huge amount of water consumption. Nestl already is using fresh water from environment in their production facilities. In future, as a part of their commitment to sustainable business, when they will go for further production facilities in developing and least developed countries, huge amount of water consumed in course of production might be threat to drinking water supply in those regions. Thats why, Nestl should be proactive regarding this issue and should think of alternative source of water to use in their production facilities.

How Nestl can Minimize Water Consumption:

There is basically two ways through which Nestl now can ensure the minimum withdrawal of water from natural source.

Recycle and Reuse of water in Production Facilities:

One way of checking water consumption is to directly reduce the need of withdrawal from natural source. The company has to go for recycling and reusing water already used in production facilities for further production. By nature, food and beverages industry requires a huge amount of water. A significant amount of water used as ingredient, cleaning agent, for boiling and cooling purposes, for transportation and conditioning of raw materials ends up as waste. Food industry standards specify that, spent Reduction in withdrwal of water from current source Alternative Source of water process water intended for reuse (even for cleaning purposes) must be at least of drinking quality. Spent process water in the food industry contains salt content. However, such spent water can be desalinated and organics can be removed so as to fulfill the requirements for water reuse.
Figure 1 : Ways to check water consumption

Balanced Water Consumption

Regulations for other applications like boiler make-up water or warm cleaning water are even more stringent. Study on the possibilities for reuse of vapor condensate in milk processing and the reuse of chiller shower water in meat processing as warm cleaning water shows that such water after proper treatment can give defined quality water. In this case, treatment process of water is actually a combination of pretreatment, member filtration and UV disinfection. Also, it has been found by numerous chemical and microbiological analyses that with a twostage membrane combination of nanofiltration, process water can be obtained with quality good enough for boiler make-up water or warm cleaning water. So, a socially proactive organization like Nestl should develop facility for recycling water to reuse water and thus can reduce waste as well as decrease the total withdrawal of water from natural sources.

Harvesting Rain Water:

Rainwater harvesting is not a brand new concept. However, so far, the concept of rain water harvesting is confined to the use by community. Some organizations, public and private do have taken initiative to harvest rain water but for the use of their neighboring community. We can see that Nestl has production facilities in regions where there is heavy rainfall in monsoon period. In these regions, Nestl can build up huge facilities to harvest rain water in such amount that can be used in production facilities. If Nestl is successful with such initiative, they will actually have an alternative, renewable source for water. Thus, their need of consumption ground water or water from earth surface will decline to a great extent. This will in fact result in more pure drinking water for the neighboring community. Such project might need a huge initial investment. But this will return back in the long run. Above all, organization like Nestl who is committed to sustain the environment should think over this alternative source of water to use in production process.

How Packaging is a Threat to Sustainable Business:

If you have a material in contact with food, and if its not completely inertand there are no completely inert materialssomething in the packaging will end up in the food, says Dimitrios Spyropoulos, a regulator at EFSA. Here comes the question how packaging could adversely affects the quality of food marketed by Nestl. Also, materials used in packaging when are dumped harm environment to some extent. Plastic, rubber, cardboard, metal, and glass packaging act as a barrier against all sorts of contamination, but they are also a source of contamination. In these two ways packaging can contradict Nestls commitment towards sustainable business The most common packaging material is plastic that in case of Nestl is used mostly as wrapper, Leachable from plastics can include everything from leftover monomer building blocks to additives used to make plastic strong or malleable. Glass sometimes leaches minerals or metals, particularly if it is recycled. Despite its low-leachability profile, glass containers typically require some form of a cap, which often contains rubber. Many rubber leachables come from chemicals used in or produced during processing, such as N-nitrosamines, which can sometimes be carcinogenic, or 2-mercaptobenzothiazole. Carbon blackeffectively sootwas used as an additive to make rubber supple until the mid-1980s, when it was shown that cancer-causing polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons leached from carbon-black-containing rubber used in products such as asthma inhalers and baby-bottle nipples. Last but not the least is ink. Most packaging is covered with some form of print, be it branding or a bar code. The chemicals used for printing have an uncanny ability to wind up in food.

How Nestle Can Reduce Impact of Packaging:

Reuse package used in packaging raw materials:
It is not possible for Nestl to reuse the packaging material of finished products because those are dispersed across the region. However, Nestl can reuse those packaging materials which have been used for packing the raw materials. In the value chain, Nestls backward partners do some packaging while transporting the raw materials to production facilities. These packaging materials can be accumulated in the facilities and reused. Thus, Nestl will be able to directly reduce the dumping of packaging materials.

Collaboration with Eco-friendly Packaging Organization:

As the negative impact of common plastic materials like plastic, glass and rubber is a burning issue now, many organizations are emerging as the supplier of eco-friendly packaging materials. For example, BioPack is an organization operated in Australia that is concerned with plant based packing solutions. If large global organizations like Nestl come forward and go for partnership with such packaging organizations, new organizations will come up with new ecofriendly packing solutions. At the same time, the core organization does not need to think much of eco friendly packaging and will be able to focus on core production activities.