Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
City businesses get proactive about water consumption
AS THE city copes with its worst drought in decades, some businesses are playing a role in helping to limit water consumption.
South African Breweries’s Newlands branch only uses 1.1% of the water supplied by the municipality to produce its beer and takes the rest from the Newlands spring.
Robyn Chalmers, director of communications for SAB said: “Newlands is the best-performing brewery on the continent in terms of water usage. Our water usage currently stands at 2.74 litres per litre of beer versus a water usage figure in 2012 of 3.52 litres of water per litre of beer.
“This represents a 25% reduction in the water we use for our facilities, processing and cleaning use over four years on a sustainable basis, which is a significant saving.”
Breaking it down, Chalmers explained that this was equivalent to an annual water saving of the average amount of water used by about 2 900 households a year.
Since 2012, SAB has spent R67.3 million in capital expenditure on implementing various methods to reduce water usage and CO2 footprint at its Newlands brewery.
“Of the 2.74 litres of water per litre of beer we use, approximately one litre goes into the beer, 0.1 litres goes into the beer, 0.1 litres is evaporated in the process, 0.1 litres leaves with our spent grain and is sold to farmers as feed and approximately 1.5 litres goes to effluent and the municipal works from where it is treated and redistributed into the municipal network,” Chalmers said.
“This water would not normally be available to the city due to there being no collection and reticulation facility for this spring water. As such, Newlands is in essence providing 500 million litres of water into the municipal grid, which equates to about 5 500 households at 250 litres a day a household.”
She said a survey showed more than 1 000 people were collecting water from the spring each week. Between April and December last year, 31 000 collected water from the spring, with an average of 20 to 50 litres collected per person.
Virgin Active Health clubs have also taken steps to be water wise, by limiting the amount used in their pools, showers and cleaning.
Les Aupiais, head of communications for Virgin Active in South Africa, said: “Virgin Active is extremely conscious of the need to save water and has had water restrictions in place for some time, with visible and ongoing poster campaigns in the clubs alerting members on how to save water at every opportunity.”
Aupiais said pools were under close management with backwashes being reduced to conserve the maximum amount of water, while maintaining water quality and hygiene standards.
“We have also implemented the use of pool covers. We have re-fitted our showers with lowflow shower heads and recommend members follow our new campaign of a ‘ two- minute power shower’,” she said.
“We need to maintain health and hygiene standards for members, but maintenance staff are fully aware of the need to be conservative in the use of water in the cleaning process.”
Ross Faragher- Thomas, managing director of Virgin Active, said clubs reduced water consumption by 11% last year compared to 2015. In January, Virgin Active reduced its usage by 15% compared to the same time last year.
Mayoral committee member for informal settlements, water and waste services, and energy, Xanthea Limberg, said the biggest strain on water resources presently was the drought conditions and the residential water usage for non-essential watering.
“We must remember that formal residential consumers are by far the biggest users of potable water in the municipality, consuming about 65% of the total water supplied,” Limberg said.