Program Goals and Background
Water is a critical resource and raw material in the food and beverage industry. Many companies have launched water stewardship initiatives to drive the conservation of water. Substantial water conservation can be achieved by re-purifying and recycling the clean water used in many processing and packaging steps. Advances in technology application are already being tested to do this, and their safe implementation will require the attention of experts from engineering, microbiology, and toxicology disciplines working together. The goal of this focus area for RSIA is to bring those experts together to apply new and sometimes innovative engineering, monitoring, and risk management approaches to the reduction of water use in the food and beverage industry.
Project 1: Guidelines for Water Reuse in the Bottling Industry
The bottling process requires water for cleaning containers and equipment, plant sanitation, boiling, cooking, fermenting, etc. Many water purification processes also reject water as a substantial fraction of the finished product. The Guidelines produced by this project will facilitate reductions in the bottling industry’s water footprint (total liters of water required to produce a liter of product) by guiding the application of monitoring and safety evaluation protocols for purification processes and technologies that have so far only been used in pilot or experimental applications.
The Guidelines will be developed by independent expert panels. A “core group” panel will serve as authors of the Guidelines, which a larger expert panel will review. Overall, the panels will include a broad spectrum of stakeholders interested in the safe reuse of water, including perspectives on the perceptual or acceptability aspects of reusing water. For the Guidelines to improve water safety and reduce overall water consumption, they must be acceptable to producers, regulators, and consumers concerned with product integrity and protection of the environment.
Open Request for Comments
To help us ensure comprehensive consideration of perspective, we invite public comment on all aspects of the project. Please send your input to: cleanwaterreuse@ilsi.org will help make this project a success.
Project Timeline
September 2011
Project initiation and first meeting of the core expert
group.
November 18, 2011
First drafts of expert sections of the guidance
submitted.
January 24–26, 2012
Second face to face meeting and drafting session of the core
expert group. This meeting was held in Phoenix, Arizona, in conjunction
with the ILSI Annual meeting, allowing input from the food and beverage
industry participants of the ILSI Annual meeting.
End of February 2012
Major drafting to completed and submitted by the core expert
group to ILSI-RF. The document will be compiled, reviewed and commented on by
ILSI staff and circulated back to the core experts by Mid-March 2012.
Late March–April 2012
Final edits to draft guideline submitted to ILSI RF by core
experts. The draft guidelines will be sent to a small outside expert review
group for the first round of outside comment.
End of April 2012
The revised document, based on the small expert group’s
input will be submitted to an extended expert/peer review group for a second,
broader round of review and comment. Input will be requested within a 2- to 3-week
timeline.
April 30–May 2, 2012
Outreach at International Society of Beverage Technologists
annual meeting in San Diego, California. This meeting targets
nonalcoholic beverage producers.
August–September 2012 (pending sufficient funding)
Water Reuse Guidance Expert Workshop (Washington DC)
This will be the roll-out and final review workshop for the
guidance, and will develop the final comments for the document. If
funding is not sufficient to support a full workshop, then a webinar and
associated but more extended stakeholder engagement/review would be conducted.
July 28–August 1, 2012
Outreach at the World Brewing Congress annual meeting in
Portland Oregon is planned. This meeting targets small and large-scale
alcoholic beverage producers, predominately breweries.
November–December 2012
Release of final document, including outreach to facilitate
adoption by practitioners and regulatory agencies.