As essential as it is for beverage manufacturing, water has long been taken for granted, both in terms of availability and quality. This is changing, as droughts in California and chronic water shortages in other parts of the world begin to impact food industry profits. U.S. beverage manufacturers are also realizing the potential dangers they face from using municipal water, which may be contaminated with lead, chemicals, and microorganisms, as their primary ingredient and for plant cleaning and cooling. And despite newly enacted EPA and FDA regulations, significant oversight gaps remain when it comes to water use in beverages.
It’s not surprising, then, that water issues are becoming more prominent with the domestic and international beverage industries.
“Water quality is among our industry’s highest priorities,” says William M. Dermody Jr., vice president, policy, American Beverage Association (ABA), the U.S. non-alcoholic beverage trade group. “Every [member] company has robust processes in place to ensure water purity, and the beverage industry supports and depends on a safe and high-quality municipal water infrastructure,” he tells Food Quality & Safety magazine. ABA’s membership includes the “big-three” beverage makers—The Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc., and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, which together account for about two-thirds of the U.S. soft drink manufacturing market.
Carbonated soft drinks comprise about 45 percent of the U.S. non-alcoholic beverage industry’s revenue, followed by fruit juices and beverages (15 percent); bottled waters (13 percent); functional beverages, such as energy, relaxation drinks, and ready-to-drink teas and coffees (11 percent); sports drinks (8 percent); and ice manufacturing, dairy- and soy-based drinks (7 percent), according to an analysis by ChangeLab Solutions. The ABA estimates the non-alcoholic beverage industry contributes about $169 billion to the U.S. economy annually. Worldwide sales of soft drinks and bottled water exceed $260 billion annually, according to the market research firm IBISWorld. So much of what is at stake depends on water.
Managing Water Usage
This, of course, is because water is the primary ingredient of beverage products, constituting 90 percent of sugar-sweetened soft drinks and up to 99 percent of diet sodas. But beverage manufacturers, like other food producers, also use water for material washing and moving, cooling and air conditioning, and equipment cleaning and disinfecting. In fact, two-thirds of all non-product water used in food production is for cleaning in place and heat exchange (cooling towers), according to a recent whitepaper from Haskell, an engineering and design firm. The remaining one-third is split between manual cleaning, sanitization, and miscellaneous utility demands. Coca-Cola’s bottling facility in Detroit consumes an average of 1.7 gallons of municipal water per gallon of finished product, according to a 2012 University of Michigan study. While that continues to be the average ratio, Coca-Cola says some of its bottling plants have reduced it to 1.4:1.
To enhance in-plant water conservation, Coca-Cola and most large beverage manufacturers treat non-product water for reuse. Spent water can be treated using a variety of techniques, among them membrane filtration, reverse osmosis, UV and ozone disinfection, and nano-filtration, depending on the water’s quality and subsequent application. To be used for cleaning, for example, recycled water must be at least of drinking water quality and even higher if intended for boiler makeup. Rather than discharging reclaimed water, facilities can use it for warehouse floor washing or landscaping.
While conservation at the manufacturing level is important, a much larger issue is total water usage, or the “water footprint,” which extends back to crop cultivation (typically sugar beets) and sweetener production (wet milling). In a study done jointly with the Nature Conservancy, Coca-Cola estimates it has a 70:1 total water ratio, meaning every 1 liter of finished product requires 30 liters of green water (rain water stored in the ground), 16 liters of blue water (surface and groundwater), and 24 liters of grey or waste water (water spent or used to assimilate the pollution load).
Usage estimates can vary widely. The Water Footprint Network, a nonprofit research group that works with companies and governments on conservation issues, estimates it takes 170 to 310 liters of water to produce a half liter of a typical sugar-sweetened soda (340 to 620:1 ratio). The ingredients needed for one cup of brewed coffee require 140 liters of water, while 1 liter of beer requires 300 liters, from hops field to mug.
The fact is that drinkable water sources are limited: Only 2.5 percent of the world’s water supply is freshwater, and two-thirds of that is locked up in glaciers. Much of the accessible freshwater is polluted and quality is deteriorating worldwide. At present usage rates, global demand for water will exceed viable resources by 40 percent by 2030, according to McKinsey & Company. Water scarcity is already impacting beverage and food companies, particularly in drought-stricken areas.
Coca-Cola, for example, scrapped plans in April 2015 to build an $81-million bottling facility in southern India after farmers complained about strains on local groundwater supplies. J.M. Smucker raised prices on Folger’s K-Cup coffee packs to offset the effects of Brazil’s worst drought in decades. Food producers are likewise impacted: Campbell Soup Co. saw a 28 percent profit decline in its California-based carrot division in early 2015 due, in part, to droughts followed by heavy rains. Unilever, whose brands include Lipton, estimated that natural disasters linked to climate change, including water scarcity, food price increases, and reduced productivity, cost the company about $400 million annually.
“Water risks are already affecting corporate income statements and balance sheets” because of operational disruptions and limits on growth, concludes a recent study by Ceres, a nonprofit group that advises institutional investors on environmental issues. Of 31 publicly traded major food companies Ceres studied in 2015, 90 percent cited access to water as a “material risk” in their 10-K financial filings. “Our companies are deeply involved in ensuring the sustainability of clean water sources for all,” ABA’s Dermody explains. “And our water resource managers work with environmental groups and water authorities nationwide to improve watersheds and aquifers, and will continue to do so.”
Navigating the Quality Risks
When it comes to water quality, EPA, state, and local agencies have jurisdiction over municipal drinking water (tap water) while FDA regulates bottled drinking water and manufactured beverages, including flavored water and nutrient-added water beverages. FDA’s current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) standards for bottled water include requiring producers to process, bottle, hold, and transport bottled water under sanitary conditions; protect water sources from bacteria, chemicals, and other contaminants; use QC processes to ensure the bacteriological and chemical safety of the water; and sample and test both source and final product for contaminants.
The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requires beverage manufacturers to ensure the quality of all ingredients, including water. Large beverage manufacturers became subject to FSMA’s cGMP, Hazard Analysis, and Risk-Based Preventive Controls for Human Food rule in September 2016, says FDA spokesperson Evelyn Pereira. (Juice manufacturers are subject to their own Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, or HACCP, regulations and are not bound by FSMA preventive controls requirements.) However, it wasn’t until August that FDA issued draft guidance for industry compliance with the FSMA preventive controls rule.
“This is good, but facilities amenable to FSMA preventative control rules were trying to be prepared for enforcement beginning in September,” notes Craig Henry, PhD, vice president of business development, Decernis LLC. “Industry still desperately needs commodity-specific guidance for human food, and water is the single most common ingredient in food products around the world,” he tells Food Quality & Safety.
FDA regulations implicitly assume EPA-compliant municipal water is safe for consumption. But, unfortunately, this is not always the case. EPA’s rules for public water systems require that utilities meet treatment standards for 95 percent of the water they distribute. EPA does not dictate how water must be treated, and not all municipal water is disinfected the same way, and some is not disinfected at all. This means that EPA-compliant water could be contaminated with Salmonella spp., viruses, or other pathogens. For beverage manufacturers that use between 10,000 and 500,000 gallons of municipal water per day, 5 percent contamination could be significant, not only for the product but also for potential cross-contamination within the plant.
“FSMA makes clear that food and beverage manufacturers need to ensure the biological integrity of water if they use it as an ingredient. But if they use municipal water, it is not clear that they need to do an appropriate risk assessment,” says Phyllis Posy, vice president, strategic services and regulatory affairs, Atlantium Technologies, which makes UV-light based water disinfection and treatment equipment for industry and municipalities.
Further complicating matters, EPA’s Revised Total Coliform Rule for public water systems, which went into effect April 1, 2016, changes the focus for utilities from public notification of problems to “find and fix” without notification, Posy says. The revised rule focuses on detecting and reducing maximum levels of E. coli, a proxy for other contaminants, including viruses, which are not tested. “Reduction in fecal contamination should reduce the potential risk from all waterborne pathogens including bacteria, parasitic protozoa, and their associated illnesses,” EPA explains. Under this new framework, manufacturers and the public may never know of a contamination problem.
“The intent of FSMA is to ensure safer food, but the letter of the law allows a lot of wiggle room,” Posy tells Food Quality & Safety.
Municipal water systems, most of which are aging and needing repair, are also prone to other forms of contamination, including lead, as residents and businesses in Flint, Mich. and counties in Alabama have found. Unsafe levels of industrial chemicals, including PFAS (poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances), have been found in 66 public water supplies serving 6 million people. The chemicals, commonly used in manufacturing household products, have been linked to cancers and other serious health problems. In many rural areas where people rely on wells and groundwater, contamination from hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” is a major concern. And when a natural disaster strikes, such as a Hurricane Katrina or Sandy, municipal water frequently requires a boil advisory—something manufacturers are unable to do.
“In case of a natural disaster or contamination, if the beverage manufacturer hasn’t done anything in advance, it’s too late,” says Posy. “The question is not what they should do now when there’s a mess, but what should they have done in advance? They should have done a risk assessment to understand where their water’s coming from, and not take water for granted.”
Nearly all large beverage manufacturers do treat incoming municipal water not only for potential contamination but also because of flavor profile requirements; cola syrup simply doesn’t taste right when added to chlorinated water. “But when there’s not a flavor profile issue involved, smaller beverage manufacturers may assume that because the municipal water’s good enough to drink, it must be good enough to make food and beverages,” Posy says. “Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.”
Beverage manufacturers today have a large and growing array of test and treatment technologies, depending upon their products and manufacturing needs. Similar to equipment used to recycle water waste within the plant, these can include activated carbon filters to remove sediment particles, chlorine, bromine, and organics; reverse osmosis to remove dissolved inorganic solids; micro-, ultra-, and even nano-filtration membrane systems to separate microorganisms and total dissolved solids; ion-exchange resins or polymers to remove heavy metals and maintain color and taste consistency; and UV-light and ozone systems to kill bacteria in water and on surfaces and to sanitize storage tanks, vessels, and piping. Large bottling facilities always test their incoming water to measure chemicals and microbial contaminants, and test finished product for QC and safety.
“If you take your water supply for granted and think it will be okay in the end, it will not be okay,” says Posy. “Water problems in a beverage manufacturing facility don’t come about from spontaneous generation; they get transmitted from the water supply. And that water could provide the circulatory system for making what may have started as a problem become a catastrophe.”
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