Challenge:

To continuously reduce our packaging and energy usage and improve waste reduction in our operations while maintaining quality, safety and customer services standards represents our major challenge. These improvements will help to drive efficiencies, shed costs and reduce the impact on the environment. Additionally, they will ensure continuous improvements in recyclable packaging and the diversion of packaging from landill, post consumer use.

Strategy:

There are five strategies in place to assure the Company’s leadership in the areas of waste and material management:

• Use 100% recyclable packaging materials for every product produced, whether the bottle, the wrap or the tray;
• Reduce packaging material use by working with suppliers on design changes that maintain functionality (i.e., bottle topload and sideload strength for shipping)
• Challenge internal teams to improve on waste reduction and internal recycling levels
• Increase recycling of products by working with government and industry on public spaces recycling, ICI recycling, multi-residential recycling and public education
• Earn environmental certification from the world’s leading standards associations to confirm energy reduction achievements

Results:

Nestlé Waters Canada only uses 100 percent recyclable PET to produce its bottles, 100 percent recyclable HDPE to produce its caps, 100 percent recyclable PET to produce its wrap and 100 percent recyclable cardboard to produce its trays. All residential recycling programs in Canada have cardboard recycling programs in place and 93 percent of them support plastics recycling. The Company has reduced the amount of plastic in its 500ml. single-use plastic bottles by 30 percent since 2000, which has reduced the amount of energy the Company uses by 30 percent and the amount of greenhouse gases it produces by 22 percent. Use of the lighter 12.2 gram bottle has saved 4.59 million kilograms of PET resin annually in Canada, thus significantly reducing its carbon footprint. Nestle Waters Canada will reduce the size of its packaging by another 27 percent in 2010 with the next evolution of the Eco-Shape bottle. It is important to reduce the amount of plastic in our containers because the bottle represents 55 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions. Nestlé Waters Canada also produces all of its single-serve 500ml. bottles inhouse, eliminating 20,000 trailor loads of empty plastic bottles and reducing greenhouse gas emissions annually by 12,000,000 kilograms.

Nestlé Waters Canada and its industry partners pioneered public spaces recycling in Canada, entering into a $7.2 million, three-year agreement with the Government of Quebec and municipalities across that province in June 2008 to collect and recycle plastic beverage containers and other recyclable materials in public spaces. The program is capturing an estimated 85 percent of recyclables in public spaces, including plastic, glass, aluminum and paper, according to program management Gaia Environmental. Beginning in June 2009, Nestlé Waters Canada and its industry partners funded a two-phase pilot public spaces recycling program in Sarnia, Ontario, that, will be presented to the Province of Ontario with the objective of establishing the initiative across the province as a complement to the blue box system. The first phase saw 76 percent of plastic beverage containers, including bottled water, diverted from landfill. The study also confirmed that these containers represent just 5 percent of the public spaces waste stream. Across Canada, according to the provincial stewards responsible, plastic beverage containers account for one-fifth of 1 percent of the waste stream. Plastic water bottles account for 40 percent of that figure or .2 percent. If the Canadian bottled water industry disappeared tomorrow, there would be no appreciable reduction in the amount of recyclable materials going into the waste stream. Recycling rates across the country have improved by approximately 10 percent over the last five years.

Nestlé Waters Canada recently received ISO 14001 certification, which recognizes that the Company has established sustaining and continuously improving environmental management systems, specifically in the areas of energy efficiency, water conservation and waste management programs. The Company must set annual targets and achieve same to maintain its certification. For example, it has set targets that will see a reduction in energy usage by 17.1 percent, a reduction in water consumption by 4.1 percent and the recycling of 96 percent of its refuse this year. The Company reduced water consumption in 2008 by 10 percent and recycled 95 percent of its waste.