Potato crisps could end world water woes

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London: Water extracted from potatoes before turning them into crisps is being proposed as an innovative way to boost water supplies.

Food giant PepsiCo, which owns the crisp manufacturer Walkers, is developing a new technology to extract water from potatoes, reports the Telegraph.

The company is developing a process to capture water released from the potatoes as they are cooked into crisps before using it in the manufacturing process.

The firm hopes by using the extracted potato water, it will eventually be able to unplug all four of its UK crisp manufacturing sites from the mains water supplies.

The water will initially be used in the manufacturing process to clean, peel and slice potatoes when they are brought in, but PepsiCo said that it hopes to also provide tap and drinking water using the system in its factories.

The company even hopes that if it can produce enough excess water from potatoes it may be able to add to water supplies for local communities near their factories.

Martyn Seal, European sustainability director for PepsiCo, said, "About 75 percent of a potato is water. So as there are a lot of natural resources in a potato, we felt we should be tapping into and reusing.”

"When we cook those potato slices while making crisps, the water normally escapes through chimneys in the roofs of our factories,” Seal said.

"We are doing some work to capture the water that goes out of those chimneys, treat it and then reuse it in the factory for the washing, peeling and slicing processes,” he added.

"We think this technology we are working on can capture enough water to allow us to take our factories of the mains supplies," Seal said.