South West Water

The South West is blessed with abundant natural beauty and a wealth of species and habitats ranging from moorland and forest to cascading rivers and idyllic beaches.

The health of this unique environment is critical to our region's two largest industries - tourism and agriculture. It is also a key aspect of the quality of life enjoyed by those that live here.

Taking care of the environment is no small task and we do our best to limit the environmental impact of our operations while also looking at ways we can make improvements to it.

This involves a combination of:

investment in the maintenance and improvement of our processes and assets (treatment works, supply network etc.)
finding ecologically sensitive ways of working (in areas such as catchment management)
managing waste products responsibly (e.g. sludge)
taking steps to reduce our carbon footprint
working alongside other agencies and organisations towards the shared goal of environmental protection.

We're dedicated to ensuring that the environment of our region is healthy now and in the future. In this section we'll look at some of the progress we're making as well as our plans going forward. Click here to read our Environmental Policy.

Making Use Of Waste Products

Our operational activities inevitably produce a range of waste products, many of which have the potential to be recycled.

At present we recycle all of our sludge using anaerobic digestion and lime stabilisation techniques to create a biosolid product for agricultural use. We have also invested in creating energy from waste and currently have seven operational CHP (Combined Heat and Power) plants.

Part of our long-term strategy is to further develop each of these activities.

We are currently working with our supply chain partners to minimise the amount of waste on construction sites and make use of by-product materials such as rock, grit, plastics and other materials.

Furthermore, we continue to take steps to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill through the recycling and composting of grit and screenings (solid materials extracted in the early stage of wastewater treatment).

In particular we are using grit in our land restoration activities, such as those at Park and Stannon lakes on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.

Environmental Policy

We provide water and waste water services to the South West peninsula of England. We have a Mission to ensure high standards of quality, efficiency and reliability which will help to meet the three key goals of:

satisfying customers;
sustaining and enhancing the environment;
adding value for shareholders, employees and the communities in which we operate.

Our aim is to achieve continuous improvement in performance and work towards achieving our vision by the implementation of management systems, certified to ISO 9001:2008, ISO 14001:2004, ISO 27001:2005, ISO 17025:2005 and Mcerts flow monitoring.

Overall responsibility for the policy and the management systems is vested with our Board of Directors.

It is the specific responsibility of line management to ensure that the management systems are clearly defined and documented and fully implemented throughout the organisation.

All employees have a responsibility to work to the requirements of the management systems.

Our policy is:

to comply with all legislation, regulations and codes of practice relevant to our business
to set and aim to meet our environmental & quality objectives and targets throughout the organisation. Our corporate sustainability report includes year end progress against published targets;
to continually improve our operations and environmental performance;
to take all practical steps to prevent pollution to the natural environment;
to develop our services in accordance with our customers expectations, within the Regulatory framework in which we operate
to ensure that our employees work in a safe environment and are motivated and competent to meet the challenges placed upon them;
to procure goods and services through approved suppliers and contractors whose products and services meet our requirements and whose quality, service ethic & environmental practices correspond with our own;
to communicate openly our environmental & quality policy and sustainability performance to our stakeholders;
to foster amongst our employees, suppliers, contractors, customers and the public and understanding of our key environmental & quality issues.

Click here to read our Environmental Policy.