Water

Our response

Our 5R water strategy

We have developed a global framework to address local water issues. Through the ‘5Rs’, each of our breweries around the world focus on issues upstream, downstream and within their operations.

pRotect: Working with farmers to ensure responsible water use and understand the watersheds we operate breweries and bottling plants within. Where appropriate we develop local partnerships to tackle shared water risks and replenish water resources through rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge.

Reduce: New processes and change behaviour to reduce water consumption within our plants whilst achieving the same high quality of product.

Reuse: Collect waste water streams within facilities and re-use appropriately, such as for cleaning the floor or our breweries.

Recycle: Investigate and employ new technologies to recycle water for appropriate use within the plant

Redistribute: Provide local communities with clean water through community investment programmes and treat waste water so it can be used safely by the local community.

Part of the water debate

As well as managing water within our own operations and value chains, we take an active role in shaping the water debate. SABMiller is a founding signatory of the UN CEO Water Mandate, an initiative that helps companies to develop, implement and disclose water sustainability policies and practices.

Through our Water Futures partnership, we share learnings and promote better watershed management. In March we held our second Water Futures Forum which included participants from NGOs, other businesses such as Coca-Cola and local government.

During 2011, SABMiller once again participated in the CDP Water Disclosure project, which aims to inform the global marketplace on investment risk and commercial opportunity relating to water risk.

SABMiller is also a member of the World Economic Forum Water Project and the Water Footprinting Network.

Progress against 2012 targets

2012 Target	Progress
Continue to improve water efficiency towards our target to be 25% more water efficient by 2015 (over a 2008 base) and undertake a comprehensive review of water use within our brewing operations in order to better target water reduction opportunities	This year we improved our water efficiency by 5%. Review completed to identify water reduction opportunities within our breweries. The results are now being used to help operations identify water-saving activities – for example management practices, technical practices and the introduction of new capital equipment – and what the associated water reduction would be if implemented.
Conduct a review of Source Vulnerability Assessment methodologies to ensure we stay at the forefront of understanding and managing business water risk.	The review was completed during the year and the results are now being used to improve our water risk methodology.
Expand the Water Futures partnership to incorporate further SABMiller operations that face significant water risks and other partners that bring new approaches to watershed protection.	We expanded the partnership to include our businesses from Colombia, Honduras, India and the USA.

2013 targets

• Pilot and launch a new facility-level water risk assessment tool
• Continue to expand the Water Futures partnership to incorporate new business, donor and NGO partners
• Continue to improve water efficiency towards our target to be 25% more water efficient by 2015 (over a 2008 base)