How can the food and beverage industry address growing water insecurity around the world?

There’s a poetic synergy to the fact that water makes up so much of both the human body and the planet we live on.

We’re a watery species. Water makes up a little over half our body composition, about 55-60%, and we need to drink about a gallon of water a day to stay hydrated. For those of us who can simply turn on a tap for clean water whenever we need and whose only real water conservation concern is taking shorter showers or not watering the lawn, this might not seem like such a problem. Yet for someone who must lug their daily water for miles from a pond or river, it’s a near insurmountable challenge.

Imagine hauling five gallons of water two hours a day, every day, for your whole life. This is the reality for some 700 million people globally who must leave their homes to fetch drinkable water from an external source. The women and girls who do most of the water carrying spend approximately 15 hours a week walking 6 km (or 3.7 miles) a day carrying 20 liters—about 42 lbs. or 20 kg—of water. It’s been reported that about 2 billion people globally lack access to clean water at home, but more recent studies show that number may be twice as high as previously thought: about 4.4 billion people around the world have no easy access to clean, safe water.

“All the water that will ever be is, right now.”

National Geographic

The surface of our blue planet is 71% water, approximately 326 million trillion gallons of the stuff. There will never be more water available, and the water that exists will continue to cycle through the hydrological cycle—evaporation and transpiration, condensation, and precipitation back to the planet’s surface—essentially forever. So, what do we mean by water scarcity when we’re talking about a resource that is never really depleted and can be reused over and over again?

Water scarcity isn’t really about the total amount of water available on the planet; it’s more about where that water is located and whether it is accessible for use. Only about 3% of the Earth’s vast water supply is drinkable freshwater, and much of that percentage is locked up in the polar icecaps and glaciers. Humans draw most of our usable water from groundwater or surface water sources—such as aquifers, lakes, rivers, and wetlands collectively known as blue water sources. Freshwater can also be found, but not easily accessed, in green water, which is locked up in plants, soil, or rain. Both blue and green water sources are classified as renewable water sources. Not included in that classification are some aquifers, like the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches for 174,000 square miles beneath the Great Plains in the United States. Aquifers replenish on a geologic time frame, not a human one, and many are being depleted more quickly than they can recharge. Scientists estimate that at current rates of depletion, the Ogallala—which directly services 8 states and provides 30% of the USA’s groundwater for irrigation—will run dry in the next 50 to 100 years.

“Water scarcity isn’t really about the total amount of water available on the planet; it’s more about where that water is located and whether it is accessible for use.”

Despite the amount of water on our planet—caught in clouds or rainfall, locked in plants, frozen in ice—access to that water isn’t always as simple as digging a well or melting snow. Just living in an area with clean fresh water doesn’t mean that water is available as a resource to you: it might be sold, used for irrigation, dammed up, or redirected elsewhere. Water scarcity is a complex, global issue, but it can be summed up simply: water is a finite resource, and demand is growing.

“Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.”

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Water has always fascinated the human imagination. Poems, books, songs, movies, paintings, and millions of other pieces of artwork reflect humanity’s relationship with and curiosity about water. It features in every piece of folklore about the origin of life across multitudes of cultures. It is present in everything we eat or drink, generates power, cleans away waste, and helps moderate temperatures both hot and cold.

You can look at the food and beverage industry as a microcosm of humanity’s relationship to water. In the United States, food & beverage accounts for about 30% of overall freshwater withdrawals. In 2012, the US food and beverage industry withdrew 34 trillion gallons of water—enough to cover the entire state of California in a foot of water—mostly from surface water resources. About 68% of those withdrawals go toward growing plants and feeding animals, demanding trillions of gallons a year.

Water is the driving force of the food and beverage industry, and during droughts—periods of abnormally low rainfall— production drops across the board. You can’t grow plants or raise animals without water, and water is itself a primary ingredient in many food and beverage products well as a major part of many processes and a source of power. Unfortunately, droughts have been both increasing and expanding globally. In 2018, 67% of the United States experienced conditions ranging from abnormally dry to exceptional drought, with the greatest instances of exceptional drought occurring in the middle of the country, an area which also hosts the largest percentage of farmland.

“About 68% of [the US food industry’s water] withdrawals go to the very beginning of the food and beverage process: growing the plants and feeding the animals, both of which demand trillions of gallons a year. In fact, agriculture takes up almost 70% of water usage globally.”

Warming temperatures brought on by climate change offer a host of problems that exacerbate drought: increased evaporation, shifts in weather, decreased snowpack and precipitation. Some climate models indicate precipitation is not only decreasing but also growing more variable, alternating periods of deluge and drought and wreaking havoc with flooding while simultaneously requiring more water storage for the lean times.

Irrigation is the solution to a lack of precipitation, supplying water through mechanical means like channels and sprinkler systems. Like so many other elements of modern food production, irrigation—which has been used for thousands of years as a method of watering crops in areas with little rainfall—swiftly expanded in scale after the Industrial Revolution and throughout the 20th century as technology grew more sophisticated and demand ballooned. Crops began to be produced in areas which previously could not support them.

Widely used in agriculture to supplement rainfall and improve crop yield, irrigation comes with its own set of challenges. Often, irrigation depletes water sources faster than they can be replenished, leading to over-exploitation of rivers and lakes, aquatic habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and even regional climate shifts. As public awareness of water scarcity grows, steps have been taken to make irrigation more efficient and sustainable. According to MIT’s Tata Center, replacing traditional center-pivot or flood irrigation with more direct and efficient drip irrigation can reduce water consumption by 20-40% while increasing crop yield by 20-50%.

Though the lion’s share of water usage for the food & beverage industry is used for crops and livestock, almost every stage of production within a facility also requires water. It’s ubiquitous as an ingredient; every food has some amount of water in it. When used as an ingredient on its own, the quality and purity of the water used can make or break the final product.

“As public awareness of water scarcity grows, steps have been taken to make irrigation more efficient and sustainable… replacing traditional center-pivot or flood irrigation with drip irrigation can reduce water consumption by 20-40% while increasing crop yield by 20-50%.”

Water as an ingredient is an example of direct water usage, when water is visibly used, like when you turn on a faucet. It’s easy to see how much water is required in a recipe, but when calculating the amount of water used to create a product, we also must consider the unseen water used throughout the process to create power, wash ingredients and equipment, cool and heat the product and its environment, and more. Water used behind the scenes in this way is known as virtual water, and while it is a solution to global water scarcity issues, it also creates a whole new range of complications.

“Water links us to our neighbor in a way more profound and complex than any other.”

John Thorson

In the 1990s, a prevalent theory suggested that the next large-scale wars would be fought over water, not politics. In a future where increasingly arid countries wouldn’t have enough water for production and agriculture, water would be the next logical resource to fight over or hoard. Professor Tony Allan, a specialist on water usage and accessibility in the Middle East, pioneered the idea that virtual water could essentially replace direct water in many areas, negating the need for aggression. If the problem is an inability to produce the things people need to live due to a lack of water, then the solution is simply to trade for those items and institute a flow of virtual water into the country, often in the form of grains and other crops. Virtual water isn’t subject to dams or transboundary issues, and it allows water-rich countries to provide for water-poor countries. In 2008, Professor Allan won the Stockholm World Water Prize for his work on virtual water.

In practice, the flow of virtual water is almost as complex and political as direct water. Water-poor countries are dependent on their water-rich neighbors for essential goods like food, textiles, and other products they can’t manufacture themselves. However, even water-rich countries are starting to contend with water scarcity issues as critical resources begin to run dry. By 2030, water demand is predicted to outpace supply by 40%. As awareness of these issues increases, so does public discourse, fueling water stewardship strategies that promote responsible and sustainable usage of this precious resource.

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”

Loren Eiseley

For the entirety of human existence, water has inspired us: not only to create works of art examining and celebrating it as a manifestation of the sublime, but also to invent better and more efficient technologies. From the days of the water wheel to immense dams spanning rivers, steam locomotives, and more, humans have found thousands of ways to harness the power of water. In the current climate, the assignment is even more complex: find a way to use water without using too much.

Water conservation is a typical first step: auditing water usage and cutting back on unnecessary uses helps with water expenditure. However, ‘use less water’ is much easier said than done, especially when we’re used to having it at our fingertips. Fortunately, in the world of food and beverage production, there are methods for conserving water at every stage of production. Companies like General Mills and Coca Cola have committed to water reduction goals, and PepsiCo announced an aggressive plan to become net water positive—returning more water to the environment than is consumed—at all company-owned and third party facilities by 2030.

PepsiCo’s approach to water stewardship is multifaceted. It includes driving systemic changes to address water insecurity—like investments that are helping restore the perennial flows of the Colorado River and programs providing water in Sub-Saharan Africa—along with improving water efficiency across their value chain before the water even reaches their facilities by scaling up a gravity-fed drip irrigation technology. The company also invests in sustainable technologies in their facilities, like collecting steam from cooking potatoes to recycle the water, using potato peelings in an anerobic digester to generate electricity, and processing wastewater through membrane bioreactors (MBRs).

“Companies like General Mills and Coca Cola have committed to water reduction goals, and PepsiCo announced an aggressive plan to become net water positive—returning more water to the environment than is consumed—at all company owned and third party facilities by 2030.”

MBRs offer a more efficient option compared to conventional activated sludge in wastewater processing, providing a cleaner effluent which can be reclaimed for urban use or filtered through a reverse osmosis process for further purification. Reclamation and reuse are two areas of water conservation where the food and beverage industry is concentrating their efforts, often treating, purifying, and reusing water within their own facilities to increase efficiency.

Equipment is another area where the food and beverage industry can practice water conservation. Cleaning equipment is one of the top drivers of water consumption in our industry: equipment and process lines must be clean and sanitized to produce safe food for consumers. Clean-in-place (CIP) systems provide opportunities to reduce inefficiencies and become more sustainable. Proper design of CIP systems to ensure they aren’t using more water than is needed and added water reclamation technologies that circulate and reuse water instead of pumping in new, fresh water can all help a facility’s conservation efforts. More efficient equipment like low-flow faucets and toilets and spray nozzles can further reduce facility water consumption. Another critical part of water stewardship is data analysis: gaining data throughout a process can provide information on inefficiencies and areas for improvement, along with tracking how much water is used.

Food and beverage isn’t the only sector seeking out more sustainable options. Governments, the private sector, and international organizations are also researching and implementing a range of strategies to combat water scarcity. Desalination, taking abundantly available seawater and converting it into potable water, has been used for more than a decade, particularly in the Middle East, where plants in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Morocco produce millions of cubic meters daily for municipal and industrial needs. Despite its benefits, desalination has its drawbacks. Building and operating desalination plants is expensive, with facilities consuming large amounts of energy— often sourced from fossil fuels. Brine, a desalination byproduct, can harm marine ecosystems if not properly managed. Another method currently under development is alternative water grids, like the one being constructed in Geelong, Australia. These systems distribute recycled water and treated stormwater for non-potable uses like graywater, agriculture, and green hydrogen generation.

Additionally, international organizations like UN-Water, UNESCO, and the World Water Council are leading efforts in water governance, research, and policy development, while research continues in both the public and private sectors. AirJoule and Atoco are on the forefront of companies exploring using Metal-Organic Framework (MOFs) rather than vapor compression and refrigerant systems to extract moisture from the air, a technology that works in both humid and arid environments.

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz in California are experimenting with fog harvesting nets to collect water for agriculture. And companies like Cetos Water and Oneka are developing more sustainable wave-powered desalination systems which convert mechanical wave motion into hydraulic power for reverse osmosis.

“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.”

Benjamin Franklin

There’s no doubt that the rise of water insecurity around the world is dire, affecting industries, communities, and ecosystems alike. The food and beverage industry, as one of the largest consumers of freshwater, plays a pivotal role in leading the charge. By optimizing processes, embracing new technologies, and better managing water at every stage of production, we can take a more responsible approach to water conservation and security. We don’t need to wait until the well is dry to know the worth of water—but we do need to act. By adopting a multifaceted proactive approach as a society, focused on sustainability, resilience, advocacy, and innovation, we can improve our water stewardship and provide future generations with the clean, accessible water they’ll need to thrive.