Rancho Dominguez, CA—BI Nutraceuticals has announced a water savings milestone for its botanical milling facility in Reno, Nevada. According to a press release, it has conserved 10 million gallons of water per year since the 150,000 square foot facility opened in 2015.

Given that the facility is located in a desert, the release says, the Operations team made water conservation a priority—and given that water plays an important role in botanical manufacturing, it was vital that the system function properly.  They created the Protexx HP Green Steam system, which uses a steam process to kill microorganisms in ingredients with minimal water usage. BI then implemented a protocol to quickly cool the ingredient after the heat application, recycling water instead of releasing it.

Justin Scarberry, BI’s general manager, said in the release: “With water access and usage rights being restricted, we had to re-engineer many of our production processes. Because of the new processes, we’ve been able to save over 10 million gallons of water per year, enough to supply 384 homes annually in the rapidly expanding Reno/Sparks Metropolitan area.”

For more information on the steam system, go here.