Beer & A Better World - Anheuser-Busch InBev

68 | Global Citizenship Report 2008-2009
• At the Wuhan brewery, an employee named
Wang Chenguo invented an ash-cleaning
tool for boilers that helps save about 50 tons
of coal a year.
Water usage and Waste management
All Chinese breweries are conducting a
coordinated program on water usage and
energy conservation management. The
Anheuser-Busch InBev global Supply team
provided a checklist of actions, such as good
operation practices (GOPs) for water, heat,
electricity, solid waste, etc., that could be given
as a guide to operators and first-line employees
to conduct this activity. The results included:
• At the Hegang brewery, a new evaporator
now recycles water and greatly reduces water
use. About 13,500 tons of water are being
saved annually.
• At the Songjiang brewery, a reverse-osmosis
system is being used for multimedia and sandfilter
cleaning. Treated water is being recycled
as cooling water for equipment. Through these
efforts, water use fell about 13 percent in 2008
compared with 2007.
• At the Nanchang brewery, plant employees
developed many water-saving ideas and put
them into service, as well as incorporating
actions from our Voyager Plant Optimization
(VPO) system into daily operations. This
included such actions as reclaiming the cleaning
water from the water treatment plant for use
in landscaping and sanitation; reforming the
pipeline of the pasteurizer so the overflow
water from the tank is sent to pre-washing
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empty bottles; and renewing the stream traps
to reclaim the recycling water. Through all
employees’ working together, water usage
declined 14 percent based on 2008, saving
about 280 M thousands tons of water in 2009.
At the Yinpu brewery, the plant has made
good progress in water-savings, using the
waste water of the rinsing operation system
as rinsing water of the multi-media filter tank,
combining multi-evaporative condensers,
and installing valves and piping to recycle
all the water used to prevent freezing during
the winter season. Correspondingly, about
26,790 tons of water has been saved in 2009.
And what is more important is that by reforming
the evaporative condenser, 247,200 kwh
electricity was saved in 2009.
At the China Zhoushan Plant, which is
located on an island, in 2009, employees
began several water conservation efforts.
Employees reclaimed rinse water from the
water treatment system and spray water from
packaging operations for use as backwashing
water for wastewater treatment filter systems.
This reclaimed water is also used in other
operations, such as sulfur dioxide removal in
the boiler scrubbers and toilet flushing. These
actions and others reduced water use by
14 percent per hectoliter of beer in 2009.
In 2009, the Wuhan plant made significant
water reductions in the brewhouse by optimizing
several rinsing processes while maintaining
strict quality standards. In total 34 billion liters
of brewing water a year will be saved, amounting
to about RMB 131,617 per year.
Employees at the Wuhan and Yinpu
breweries teamed up with local
governments to help clean and
protect rivers from pollution.