SMC to cut water use by 50% across businesses
SAN Miguel Corporation (SMC) announced that the company would reduce operational water use by 50 percent across its businesses, employing measures that include water recycling, conservation, and rainwater harvesting, among others, to meet this target by 2025.
Coinciding with World Water Day today, the Philippines’ largest conglomerate is taking on its own water sustainability challenge to reduce water usage and educate employees, business partners and communities about water stewardship.
San Miguel said it is rolling out an integrated water management system across its entire operations.
“San Miguel is going to set an example in its responsible use and management of water,” said SMC president and chief operating of
“Many of our facilities are al water, but we can always do more. Given the scale of our need, we’re working to become more conscious about our water footprint.”
Cutting groundwater use, recycling, harvesting rainwater
A major component of San Miguel’s water strategy involves minimizing the amount of water it draws from ground water sources, and instead reusing and recycling process water and harvesting rainwater.
The company said it can also utilize surface runoff water (usually excess stormwater) from mountains, creeks and rivers and
of implementation will focus on establishing baseline information, data that will then be analyzed to see where the company could and conservation.
While many of the newer plants have water meters per line and per process, other older facilities need
Installing separate water meters will make water audits relatively easier to perform, prevent wastage
Petron’s desalination plant
San Miguel’s newer facilities are all built with smart water usage in mind. Petron’s RMP- 2 plant 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 via a state-of-the art desalination facility. Desalination is a process that transforms salt water into consumable water.
Built at the cost of P474 million, the desalination plant supplies 25 percent of the roughly 2,100 cu m per hour total water requirements percent of the total amount of boiler-houses to generate power.
For Petron RMP- 2, recycling water is an important aspect of the - ment system.
About 67 percent of the water RMP-2 uses is cycled back into the operations before being returned to the sea nearby. Ang’s challenge increase the amount of recycled quality.
“It can be done. With technology in our newer facilities, we have enormous innovative capacity to tackle the challenge of water scarcity and create positive water impact.”
SMB efficiency ‘highest’ in 10 years
Another business where much has already been done in terms of improving water usage is San Miguel’s beer business. The breweries, and a packaging plant in the Philippines.
In the brewing process, water is used in generating steam, and in the cooling and washing pro ranging from 4.0 to roughly 3.5 hectoliters per hectoliter of beer, - ly over the last 10 years. Nevertheless, SMB is looking to improve levels by reducing the amount of water related to packaging.
equipped with on-site water treat - dent that improvements can still be made to recapture and reuse wastewater across the operations.
“At the simplest level, it’s about educating our employees to be more conscious about our water footprint,” Ang says. “No effort is too small. In many of our toilets or percussive taps. We regularly monitor for leaks and we’re educating our employees on the importance of conservation. We’re looking to building cisterns and systems to collect rainwater.”