Recent years have seen an increasing environmental awareness and a considerable rise in fresh water costs and in effluent treatment and disposal costs. The need to decrease the use of water in the process industries has favored the development of water use minimization methodologies. Wastewater minimization methodologies have been developed for continuous process plants in the last years. However, there is very little work reported on the systematic rationalization of the water use in the batch process industry due to the complexity involved. In this paper a methodology is presented which identifies the in-plant water reuse opportunities, resulting in significant freshwater consumption reductions. The methodology is illustrated with a case study based on food industry.