When PepsiCo recently surpassed its goal of 25% improvement in operational water-use efficiency from a 2015 baseline in regions facing high water risks two years ahead of schedule it was not because the company hit a lucky home run, according to Bryan Seitz, sustainability strategy manager and climate lead for Frito-Lay North America.
As Elizabeth Crawford reports in an article published by FoodNavigator USA, the company’s Kolkata factory devised a way to recapture the steam vapor created when the potato slices enter the fryer. That steam is the water that is in the potato, and PepsiCo redirects first as low-grade waste heat to offset thermal processes, and then, after the steam is condensed into water and cleaned, the company returns it to the plant to offset freshwater uses in other processes, Seitz explained.
On a standard potato chip line, it will be about 14 million gallons of water that we will be able to reclaim and reuse to offset from freshwater use, he added. This adds up to about 60 million liters of water per year at a single site, according to PepsiCo.
Source: FoodNavigator USA. Read the full story here
Image: Credit Hans from Pixabay
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