14 DAY TRIAL // Throughout the past 10 years, the Serrallés Rum Distillery in Ponce, Puerto Rico spent a total of $16 million (roughly €12,5 million) on a new filtration system.
Their goal: to produce environmentally friendly rum and cut down on their annual fuel use.
As one can easily guess, rum production is a rather messy business, as considerable amounts of wastewater result from consecutive fermentation and distillation processes.
Of course, all of this water must somehow be disposed of.
Up until recently, Serallés used to just look at whatever fields happened to be nearby as appropriate dumping areas. However, this is no longer the case.
Thanks to the new filtration system the company installed, the resulting wastewater can be safely used to produce bio-gas, which later on powers the company's boilers.
According to ENN, this cuts down annual fuel bills by nearly 50%.
Apparently, the aforementioned filtration system is so efficient that the resulting water can even be used for irrigation purposes, as it is 99% free of all potentially harmful organic matter.
The same source reports that the Serallés, presently in charge of running the family business, explained how “This is the ultimate in local production. At the end of the day, we do this anaerobic process, reducing about 70% of the organic material. That wasn’t enough — we had to make this water irrigation-grade water. We end up with a 99% reduction in organic material.”
Given the fact that the Serrallés Rum Distillery is responsible for producing an annual 15 million gallons of this beverage, it is a good thing that the company is also interested in giving due consideration to environmental issues.
Interestingly enough, Bacardi Limited, the world's largest spirits company functioning in the private sector, is also working towards improving its ecological footprint by better managing its use of resources – water and energy in particular.