Water in Your Supply Chain

Around 100 people attended the IGD “Water in Your Supply Chain” conference on 21 October when IGD launched its new guide to water in grocery supply chains. This new guide is available free and is designed to help food and grocery companies assess the impact of, and better manage the water-related risks they face. It was put together by an industry working group consisting of major grocery retailers, manufacturers and primary producers, many of whom attended the conference.

A number of presentations were made that discussed the challenges and solutions facing businesses today as they try to reduce their water footprint. The panel of speakers agreed that the journey to reduce water risks within business had started but that there was still some way to go. One area touched upon was the interaction between farmers and their clients as well as amongst farmers themselves.

Mike Barry, Head of Sustainable Business for M&S; emphasised the benefits of providing a forum within which farmers are able to discuss their successes and learn from one another. M&S provide such forums with an annual sustainability conference to which their farmers are invited and with six additional events per year at which farmers can discuss the more practical elements of implementing improvements. Annie Graham, Head of Brand Sustainability for Sainsbury’s; provided an example of how one of their potato suppliers, Greenvale, had achieved particular success with their innovative root vegetable washing system, Project Cascade. The changes introduced resulted in a reduction from 55,000 gallons to 10,000 gallons of average daily water use.

Andrew Clark, Head of Policy Services at the NFU, emphasised the need to ensure that the buyers of farmer’s produce cooperated to ensure that a single set of guidelines and a single standard was set for them to follow. This was further supported by Dr David Tickner, Head of Freshwater Programmes for the WWF, who said that he believed that there were two main areas where business could effectively work together; firstly in the construction of industry wide metrics and the definition of certain standards and secondly by cooperating at specific locations where there is water scarcity or water risk, Lake Naivasha for example.