An acknowledged leader in water use, Foster’s closed its Kent brewery in central Sydney in 2004 and moved the production facility to Yatala, upgrading capacity and technology. The brewery has doubled brewing capacity and increased water consumption by 10 to 15 per cent.

The group already recycled water for the past decade at its Abbotsford brewery in Melbourne, halving water use to 3.5 litres of water for each litre of beer produced.

"We were already ahead of global best practice on water use," says Russell Peel, the director of health, safety and environment at Foster’s.

Producing about 430 million litres of beer and other beverages each year, the Yatala brewery uses 2.3 litres of water to brew one litre of beer - about five litres ahead of the international standard.

Yatala uses drinking water for its products and wherever water touches the product. Virtually everything else - keg washing, vacuum pumps, washdown hoses, cooling towers and boilers and toilet flushing - uses recycled water.

On-site treatment of the effluent purifies it and desalination returns it to drinkable water quality. "Our recycled water is just as good as that which comes out of a tap," Peel says.

"(At Abbotsford) we take water that’s only marginally soiled and use it for cooling towers instead of using fresh water. At Yatala, when the water has been heavily contaminated (mainly containing beer, water and yeast) we purify it for hosing down or cleaning and other uses on site other than producing beer. We went to another level of water recycling."

Contaminated water would normally go to the Brisbane water treatment plant, where contaminants are removed and the water is released back into the environment. Foster’s water purification technology goes much further. Similar to that used in Western Australia for sea water desalination, it removes membrane plant and remaining salts and returns the water to drinking water quality.

Deborah Cassrels