Waste management

Our day-to-day activities of supplying water, managing wastewater and operating gas and electricity networks create significant waste by-products including excavated spoil and wastewater sludge. We constantly seek more sustainable solutions for these materials and this year we have developed a comprehensive waste and resource use policy covering all our waste streams. The policy includes waste generated at our offices where we have improved recycling facilities.

As well as aiming to reduce the amount of waste we produce, we are focused on re-using that which we do generate, minimising our carbon impact and using more products derived from it.. For example, we have already reduced wastewater sludge disposal to landfill from our regulated business, diverting it instead to re-use and recovery uses. Last year, we achieved the total elimination of landfill disposal, with 86% of the 769,000 tonnes of wastewater sludge going to recycling and 14% for energy recovery. Our other main waste stream is excavated spoil – and in 2007/08, 90% of our water, wastewater and electricity network spoil was recycled (up from 37% in 2003/04). Our gas network spoil recycling rates improved from 85% in 2006 to 96% in 2007.