San Pellegrino / Nestlé Waters — AWS-Certified Catchment Stewardship of the San Pellegrino, Limpia & Brembo Aquifers (Italy)

Sanpellegrino S.p.A. (part of Nestlé Waters), based in San Pellegrino Terme in the Bergamo Alps, has bottled water since 1899. In November 2020, independent certifier SGS Tecnos audited the company's Ruspino factory against the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) International Water Stewardship Standard, covering three hydrogeological basins — San Pellegrino, Limpia and Brembo. The site was recommended for AWS Core Certified status with an annual surveillance interval, with only two minor observations and zero major or minor non-conformities.

The certification report quantifies the San Pellegrino local basin's water balance at a recharge of 6,557,000 m³/year against a discharge of 4,257,360 m³/year — a net surplus of roughly 2,299,640 m³/year. Site records show the company's own water-withdrawal ratio (bottled water output versus catchment water used) fell from 2.10 in 2018 to 1.92 in 2020, part of a self-reported 20% cut in water consumption over four years. Extraction has been diversified across multiple wells (San Pellegrino II & III, new wells SP4–SP6) and buffer-tank storage capacity was being expanded toward 5 million litres by 2021 specifically to avoid concentrating pressure on any single source.

Sanpellegrino formalised aquifer-protection zones within the San Pellegrino Terme municipality's territorial plan, funded landslide-stabilisation works along the Brembo river cycle path, exchanged land with the municipality for a public park, ceded an industrial well to supply the municipal swimming pool, and maintains two public drinking fountains. A biennial population survey found a local acceptability index of 87% in 2019. Both the Mayor of San Pellegrino Terme and the president of the regional water utility Uniacque, interviewed independently by the auditor, confirmed the company's role in aquifer protection.

As a caveat, the reported water-balance surplus rests on Sanpellegrino's own hydrogeological modelling and monitoring rather than an independent regulatory ruling on sustainable yield, and Italian mineral-water concessions are not subject to a hard extraction cap. The practice is best read as a well-governed, independently audited corporate watershed-stewardship programme rather than a verified sustainable-yield guarantee.

Read the full analysis: https://a4ws.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/AWS-000199-San-Pellegrino-Bergamo-2020-CERTIFICATION-REPORT.pdf