Home OUR SUSTAINABILITY Value Water Stewardship

Our Goals

100% of our communities in high stress areas have measurably improved water availability and quality

  • Our Ambition:

    Roughly 10% of our breweries are located in proximity to watersheds identified as facing “high water stress” in India. Every drop counts and, as the world’s leading brewer, it is our role to work towards water stewardship throughout our operations and value chain. In the reporting year, we have updated our Water Policyemphasizing our commitment to minimizing water discharge, reducing water usage intensity and improving water availability and quality.

Areas of Focus

  • Water withdrawal and risk assessment

    ·Our water replenishment project in India helped to create a farm pond to support irrigation.
    ·With reference to the World Resources Institute’s (“WRI”) Aqueduct tool and our internal custom-made water risk tool, we conduct a comprehensive, seven-step watershed management process at breweries located in water-stress are as annually and quarterly to classify each brewery from “Very High-Risk” to “Low to Medium Risk” sites.
  • Water usage

    ·We implement water reduction measures at our breweries to reduce reliance on water withdrawals, while at the same time promoting water conservation within our workforce and breweries to guide water-saving practices. With the joint efforts of each brewery, up to now, all breweries in the APAC region have joined the water 1:1 development plan, and formulated brewery-specific water consumption solutions guided by 3R+A and VPO+TECH.
    ·We also monitor the supply chain and apply the WRI Aqueduct tool to ensure that our agricultural raw materials do not come from areas with water scarcity or where water scarcity is expected.
  • Water discharges

    ·We monitor and review relevant regulations and standards in relation to effluent management intended to ensure 100% compliance in our breweries.
    ·We treat our effluent before discharge to prevent potential impacts associated with water pollutants and ensure that all parameters are within legal limits.
    ·We are 100% in compliance with water quality standards for discharge. Four of our breweries have adopted the Zero Effluent Discharge strategy, where the extracted water either flows into our product or is reused internally for operations.
  • Water replenishment

    ·We aim to improve the availability and quality of water where we operate.We place high emphasis on China, the most populated country, and India, where many communities have limited access to clean potable water.
    ·In total, we have replenished 31 million hl of water across the APAC region.

Water Stewardship

  • Our Accomplishments

    100% of our sites in APAC have conducted local outreach activities,determined water solutions specific to their community identified appropriate solutions.We have reduced our water usage for beer production to 2.20 hl/hl (a 26% reduction against 2017 baseline).
  • Our Initiatives

    We replenished approximately 15 million hl water in China. In India, we have activated watershed initiatives at five breweries in high water stress areas. We have created cumulative water recharge capacities of more than 16 million hl across four high water stress areas since 2018 and our water replenishment rate in India reached 207%.
  • Looking Forward

    Watershed management, water conservation and effluent management have been and will continue to be key focuses. We will continue our work to review the level of water stress across where we operate in APAC to develop partnerships that improve water availability and quality (especially in areas facing water stress), and to explore solutions for continuous improvement through our innovative R&D and collaboration with key stakeholders including industry players.