Nestlé Waters Opens Switzerland’s Largest Anaerobic Digestion Plant

Nestlé Waters and Swiss renewable energy developer Groupe E GreenWatt have opened Switzerland’s largest agricultural biogas plant, which will recycle agricultural waste and produce renewable energy.

The anaerobic digestion plant, which is located is in the Treize-Cantons industrial park next to the Henniez bottling plant, will use 25,000 tons of agricultural fertilizer from local farms and 3,800 tons of organic waste created during the production of Nespresso and Nescafé. These raw materials will produce 4 million kWh of electricity and 4.5 million kWh of heat annually by burning this gas in a cogeneration engine.

The Nestlé Waters bottling plant will use this recycled heat, thus increasing its renewable energy use to more than 50 percent and reducing its carbon emissions by 1,750 tons per year.

The residual material left over at the end of the biogas process will be used by partner farms as fertilizer.

In addition to helping the company achieve its goal to halve CO2 emissions from its Swiss production facilities between 2010 and 2020, the anaerobic digestion plant will also bring Nestlé closer to its global zero-waste goal, which the company has also targeted for 2020. All of Nestlé’s US factories achieved zero waste last year.

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