URC Thailand is a food company and cannot operate without water. The company values the importance of water and realizes that everyone must be able to have access to clean water. Therefore, we have come up with the 'Water for all' project, an internal project that URC Thailand has been doing for the past four years. With an in-house sustainability team, URC Thailand really takes the environment very seriously.
Because the company uses a lot of water on a daily basis, we at URC Thailand, always try to find ways to be more sustainable. The 'Water for all', water management campaign, promotes and emphasizes the '3Rs Water' behavior amongst the employees at the company.
- Reduce: Anything within the company that requires a big amount of water for cleaning, for example, some areas can be oily. Instead of spraying the oily zones with water straight away, the staff will mop or wipe first, making it easier to clean with water afterwards.
- Reuse: Water that has been used during the company's Clean in Place (CIP) process would get reused for the first step of machinery cleaning. On top of that, URC Thailand also reuses the water for other things within the company, like gardening, cleaning the outdoors, or storing it for future use—saving the company from having to use additional water for those steps.
- Recycle: Since 2020, instead of dumping wastewater into the natural environment, URC Thailand has been recycling the effluent through the company's wastewater treatment plants. The water then also gets recycled again through the central wastewater treatment plants at Samut Sakhon Industrial Estate to make sure that it is clean enough under the standard guideline before releasing the water into the surrounding community's natural waterbody.
That's not all, as a food company, many pieces of equipment require water in the operations, and to prevent using more water unnecessarily, the company has been making sure that all equipment is well maintained and that none of them has any leakage.
As a result of the 3Rs Water activities, in 2021, the company used 9%—or around 25,839 cubic meters—less water than the previous year. We were also able to control and manage our water consumption at 3.05 cubic meters/metric ton per production output, and the goal is to keep reducing by 2% more every year.
However, that's not the best outcome of this project after all. With the water being saved and used less at URC Thailand, the company also creates less wastewater from the 3Rs Water, creating a more sustainability in both the working environment and the surrounding environment. This project also keeps the company's employees informed and mindful about the importance of water, creating a habit to be more sustainable and environmentally conscious in their everyday lives.
For URC Thailand, the cost for production and manufacturing has also been reduced by the 'Water for all' project, which goes according to the company's sustainability goals. When the company uses less water, we also help the government save the water and save the cost in producing water as well as preserving the natural sources of water for Thailand.
Lastly, but not least, since URC Thailand has been releasing less effluent into the waterbody, causing less damage to the environment in the community. The environment also gets to recover itself, too.
The 'Water for all' project is just one of the many projects that URC Thailand has been doing to make sure to stay sustainable and create as little damage to our planet as possible. The company's many sustainability campaigns have also made us suitable to receive many achievements and certificates; Environmental Management System Certification (ISO 14001: 2015) from Intertek Certification Limited; Green Industry certificate from the Ministry of Industry, Thailand; the G.R.E.E.N Excellence in Environment Award from Corporate, Quality, Environment, Health & Safety, and Sustainability (CQEHS); and the Good Environmental Governance Award 2021 from Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand.
Source: Hill+Knowlton Strategies
