Water

Heineken needs water to brew and pack beer. We use water from a variety of sources: municipal grid, well water and surface water. Due to changing climate patterns, pollution, increasing populations and competition from other sectors, fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce in some parts of the world. To secure our future operations, both water availability and quality are of the utmost importance to our company. However, we also release water once it has been used in the brewing process. This water requires treatment in order to minimise any possible environmental impact. Thus, managing, treating and reducing consumption of this most valuable of the Earth’s resources is a high priority.

The data in this section relate to breweries and soft drink plants over which Heineken has technical control. The data though exclude our facilities in Bad Brambach, Chemnitz, Karlsruhe, Rosenheim and Würzburg (Brau Holding International, Germany) and our soft drink plant in Gastein (Austria, in 2007) that did not submit a report. Collectively, these facilities represent less than 1 per cent of the total group volume. Data from our maltings units can be found in Appendix 3.