A coalition of U.K. food and drink firms, including the British arms of Nestle and PepsiCo, has reduced their total water use per ton of product by 11.9 percent since 2007.
The figures, contained in the Federation House Commitment’s latest annual report, puts the FHC's members over half of the way towards their 2020 goal of reducing water use by 20 percent.
Total annual water use by FHC signatories has fallen by around 607 million gallons between 2007 and 2010, the report says.
Launched in 2007, other signatories of the Federation House Commitment include the U.K. arms of Heinz, Kraft and Coca Cola. In total over 40 companies are signed up.
FHC is jointly run by the U.K. government’s Waste & Resources Action Programme and industry body Food and Drink Federation.
In 2008 Food and Drink Federation announced that its members had slashed their CO2 emissions by 17 percent since 1990, the equivalent of reducing an average of 58,000 tons of CO2 per year, or taking 22,000 cars off U.K. roads each year.