According to the World Wildlife Foundation, the water systems which help our ecosystems thrive are increasingly getting saturated by catering to the needs of an ever growing human population and two-thirds of the world’s population will face an acute shortage of water by 2025.
Committed to responsible water stewardship, Nestlé India is continuously working on conservation and optimal utilisation of water. Our various initiatives include efforts to reduce, re-use and re-cycle water, across the value chain and with communities, for a sustainable tomorrow. We work closely with communities to create awareness on water conservation and preservation and at the same time use technology to reduce water usage in our manufacturing locations.
During the last 15 years, for every tonne of production, we have reduced water consumption by 53% and reduced waste water discharge by 55%. We have partnered with institutions with expertise in the field of water and have adopted new technologies to re-cycle and re-use water to avoid wastage across our value chain.
We have a water stewardship initiative with AgSRI at the Kabini river Basin in Karnataka. The project sets up demonstration farms and trains farmers on ecologically sustainable practices to reduce the agricultural water withdrawal from the catchment area, while improving agricultural productivity.
This has been accompanied by our efforts to spread awareness about sustainable usage of water as well as providing clean and safe drinking water across 244 schools around our factories to over 1,26,000 students. Our water awareness programme has reached out to 92,000 students, educating them on the sustainable usage of water resources. We have recently partnered with the Department of Medical and Health, Government of Rajasthan to offer access to clean drinking water at Public Health Centres as part of the Adarsh Public Health Centre Yojna.