Resource use
Managing resources effectively
As part of our commitment to protect the Earth, we seek to manage resources responsibly, particularly as demand for water rises, intensifying the pressure on the world’s freshwater supplies. This is particularly important with the world’s agricultural production accounting for some 70% of global freshwater use. By optimising our use of water and materials, we aim to lower our impact on the environment, while strengthening agricultural value chains and promoting food security. We work across our operations and collaborate with suppliers to raise standards, conserve nature and prevent pollution. Beyond this, we aim to manage waste efficiently, prioritising reuse and recycling, where possible.
Case studies
Conserving water and creating value from waste
Within our sugar operations in Brazil, three of our four sugar mills have vinasse concentrators. We are exploring the possibility of installing a concentrator at the fourth mill. This technology enables us to extract and reuse water from vinasse (a by-product of sugarcane processing), thereby lowering the volume of water withdrawn and making good use of the nutrients in concentrated vinasse. This also lowers the need to transport greater volumes of unconcentrated vinasse for the fertilisation and irrigation of fields and related transport greenhouse emissions. Three of our mills also have on-site industrial wastewater treatment plants, enabling them to treat and reuse significant volumes of water, further reducing water withdrawal needs.
Developing a closed loop water system
At our Kandla refinery in India, we typically treat 150-180 thousand litres of wastewater per day. To optimise our use of water resources, improve operational efficiency and support our global water intensity goal, we collaborated with water efficiency experts, identifying a closed loop system as the most effective way to prevent the discharge of treated water. In 2024, our zero liquid discharge plant went into operation, enabling us to recover large volumes of treated wastewater daily, with the recycled water delivered back into our operations. Importantly, this project also helps to conserve water in the water-scarce Kutch district.
