Water use
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Water use |
Cooling water use |
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Contact water use |
Water input |
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In 2008, the use of contact water decreased slightly to 15.0 million cubic meters (down from 15.4 million cubic meters in 2007). Major users of contact water were Sandoz (53%), Pharma (28%) and Consumer Health (11%). During 2008, Pharma and Sandoz were able to further reduce their contact water use by approximately 0.2 million cubic meters each, while the other Divisions slightly increased their use. Consumption of non-contact water (mainly for cooling purposes) also decreased by 6.0% from 68.2 million cubic meters in 2007 to 64.1 million cubic meters in 2008. The main use of cooling water was for the control of fermentation processes and for air conditioning (cooling) of office buildings. For this purpose Novartis is using water abstracted as groundwater next to rivers or directly from rivers.
A total of 20.9 million cubic meters (26%) of the total quantity of water (contact and non-contact water) that Novartis uses is purchased from water suppliers, and 58.0 million cubic meters (73%) is drawn directly from the environment (from groundwater wells or from surface water bodies), mainly for cooling purposes.
Water use targets and outlook
While strategies on the use of cooling water vary from site to site, increasing efforts are being made to further reduce the use of contact water that requires treatment, both in order to reduce pollutant loads and because this is a growing environmental and cost factor.
Novartis has set an efficiency improvement target on contact water of 10% for the period 2006 to 2010 (based on 2005 performance), translating to an average 2% annual improvement.
Over the past three years, Novartis has been able to improve its average efficiency (measured versus sales in local currencies) in the use of contact water by an impressive 27%, well above the targeted 6%.
