The global food conglomerate Nestlé is on a campaign much like Ford’s to analyze water use at all its facilities around the world. Between 2002 and 2015 it more than doubled the amount of food it can produce with a cubic meter of water.
One plant—a Carnation factory in Modesto, California, in the heart of the state’s drought country—makes every can of Carnation evaporated milk sold in the United States. Since it opened in 1993, it has been taking in raw milk, evaporating off about half its volume as water, and throwing that “milk water” down the drain. Meanwhile, it has been taking in fresh potable water from the Modesto water utility to run the factory—to make steam to evaporate the milk, to clean food-processing equipment, to run HVAC systems and basic utilities.
The plant buys 1.7 million gallons of fresh water a week, and throws away 500,000 gallons of “milk water” in the same period.
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