Clean water is critical to sustaining life. Whether mixing or diluting active ingredients, or cleaning and washing equipment used to manufacture them, all of our consumable products use water. We measure our water usage and evaluate ways to reduce and reuse water in our manufacturing, support utilities, landscaping, and sanitation processes.

In 2010, water conservation projects resulted in a 6 percent reduction in water consumption globally, positioning us to meet our 2012 water reduction target of 25 percent. Collectively, these water conservation projects will save 8.7 million gallons of water a year, enough to fill 13 Olympic sized swimming pools.

The installation of an emerging technology—the EnviroTower—to the existing cooling tower to reduce scaling, corrosion, and microbial contamination, which in turn improves the heat-transfer efficiency of chillers. This project reduces the annual energy consumption by nearly 200,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) and conserves 2 million gallons of water per year. Installation of these towers in Carlsbad and Austin resulted in estimated savings of more than 3 million gallons per year.

• In Carlsbad, several additional large projects were completed. We installed autoclave trap cooling kits to prevent continuous discharging of condensed clean steam to waste. Two clean steam generators were reconfigured to use heated soft water—water recycled from another process on the line. Retrofits were made to the room that houses ultrapure water for all of the manufacturing and R&D lab use within one building. The reverse osmosis/deionized water systems were reconfigured. Additionally, the landscape irrigation system was converted from a conventional system to a grey water system that utilizes non-potable water. Combined, these projects resulted in total water savings of more than 6 million gallons per year.
• In Pleasanton, the landscape irrigation system was updated with higher efficiency nozzles, and the water supply was converted to a grey water system. These improvements are estimated to result in water savings of 1,730,385 gallons per year.
• Water conservation goes beyond California. Our facility in Auckland, New Zealand has a long-standing record of environmental stewardship. In their water-intensive serum manufacturing business, water and energy efficiency are key drivers to cost reduction. In 2009, the site redesigned the manufacturing process to streamline an outdated line and optimize water utilization, which in turn resulted in a 100 percent utilization rate for the serum produced on the line. Although the plant increased production, the site achieved annual water savings of 8.7 million gallons.

Read about our water reduction.