Australia is the driest inhabited continent, and the severe drought that has affected the country in recent years has affected both the cost and availability of fresh food. Conserving water is vital, not only to protect the livelihood of our farmers and rural communities, but also to ensure that we can continue to supply fresh fruit, vegetables and meat to customers around Australia.

All water used in Woolworths stores is provided by licensed water authorities. Water use in our stand alone stores is metered and billed directly by the water authorities. However, for stores located within shopping centres, water use is billed through lease outgoings rather than through direct metering.

Currently, only 161 of our supermarkets, or about 20%, receive individual water bills with metered usage. This means we need to extrapolate from known water usage to estimate our total water usage.

Performance Status

Our estimated water usage during the 2007–08 reporting period was 1.94 GL (1,940,000,000 litres), compared to our estimate of 1.96 GL for 2006–07. This 20 million litre reduction in water use was driven by our Water Wise project, which also offset the 15 new supermarkets that were built. In our Sustainability Strategy 2007–15, we reported an estimated water use of 2.2 GL for the 2006 calendar year, but this is now believed to be an overestimate. This demonstrates a need to develop more accurate modelling for water use estimation.

In the Sustainability Strategy we committed to rolling out water efficiency measures (spray guns and flow restrictors in all food preparation areas, staffrooms and bathrooms) in all our supermarkets in Australia and to reduce our water use by an estimated 200 ML per annum by 2010. We also extended this project to our BIG W stores. In 2006–07, we implemented our Water Wise project in 100 supermarkets in South East Queensland. In 2007–08, we retrofitted a total of 812 stores with water efficient fixtures and fittings including 664 supermarkets and 148 BIG W stores.

Initial assessment of water use data in South East Queensland has allowed some estimation of the overall water savings in this region. Only 14 of the 100 stores in the region are individually billed for water use, and the metered water use in the 2006–07 financial year of 35.1 ML was reduced to 29 ML in the 2007–08 financial year. This translated to an estimated annual water saving of 43.8 ML across the 100 stores.

Every Drop Counts program

Woolworths Limited is a participant in Sydney Water’s Every Drop Counts program. In 2007–08, four Woolworths supermarket stores in the Sydney region were audited for their water use. While we had already established a water reduction target in our Sustainability Strategy 2007–15 and had begun the national rollout of our Water Wise program, working with Sydney Water’s program has helped us understand water use breakdown in our typical store types.

Water use in supermarkets is typically dependant on store departments (e.g. seafood, deli, produce) and the number of staff. About 50% of the water in our stores is used in food serving areas for preparation, hydration or cleaning and the rest is used in amenties, floor washing, ice machines and other equipment.
The key actions we will take forward from the Every Drop Counts program are:

• Training our Eco Ambassadors so they can carry out water audits in stores, identify visible water leaks and report back to the maintenance team for repair.
• Reviewing and standardising cleaning practices to ensure water is not wasted while we maintain food safety and public health as our number one priority.
• Behaviour change with our staff will play a big role in saving more water in the future and we’ll be focusing on this more through our staff induction and other training and communication forums.

Rainwater harvesting

The biggest opportunity for capturing rainwater is at our Distribution Centres (DC), where we have large roof spaces. Woolworths Logistics currently harvests rainwater at four out of our 14 DCs where the 100 kL tanks store water for use in toilets and irrigation.

Our Logistics team has embarked upon a major rainwater harvesting program that involves installing rainwater tanks at our “sheds”. The first project at our Sydney Regional Distribution Centre (SRDC) in Minchinbury was completed in October 2008 and involved the installation of six tanks with a total capacity of 890 kL. We are predicting annual rainwater capture of 12 ML.

The water captured at SRDC will meet about 95% of the annual water demands of the water cooling towers used in the large refrigeration systems at the shed. Plans are in place for two more DCs to have rainwater tanks installed, and the program may eventually roll out to six DCs in total, with the water to be used in refrigeration cooling towers, toilet flushing, landscaping, truck washing and bin washing.

At our head office at Norwest Business Park in Sydney, we have a 1 ML rainwater storage capacity supplying landscaping irrigation, car wash bays and building amenities. Some petrol sites have rainwater tanks, with the captured water used in toilet flushing and irrigation.

Challenges in implementation

The fact that only our stand alone stores are currently fitted with individual water meters makes it difficult for us to get an accurate measure of the total water use across our stores. We have investigated the feasibility of installing water meters in all existing stores; however, this would not be cost effective due to the cost of purchasing and installing meters and interruptions to store operations. However, we will install water meters in all new stores going forward.

Opportunities exist for Woolworths to invest in rainwater capture tanks and infrastructure, but some businesses face barriers to this. The majority of our stores are located within shopping centres and there are issues related to who owns and is responsible for the roofing in these centres. This is less of an issue for stand alone stores and rainwater tanks are now becoming a requirement for development approvals when constructing new supermarkets.

Designate Reporting © 2008