Waste minimisation and recycling

Waste from streetworks

We are recognised as a leading company for our approach to highway reinstatement and managing the material excavated from our extensive streetworks programmes. We operate a 'managed loop' system for processing and recycling the material excavated from our streetworks and have achieved a 99 per cent recycling rate for this excavated material this year.

We won a National Joint Utilities Group (NJUG) Sustainability Award in December 2009 for our achievements in improving the recycling of excavated material during our work to replace London's oldest water mains. We achieved this by setting up a 'Strategic Waste Action Group', through which our contractors have increased recycling rates for excavation material from 34 per cent to 98 per cent in three years.

Water treatment

From the water treatment process the main waste streams are sludge and weed, of which we produce approximately 36,000 tonnes per year and recycle almost 100 per cent. Water treatment sludges are recycled directly to agricultural land from the water treatment works, or released into the sewerage network and recycled along with the main sludge stream. We also recycle weed by sending it for use in land restoration.

Wastewater treatment

Sewage sludge is the main product of the wastewater treatment process. In 2009/10 we put 100 per cent of this to beneficial use. This included using sludge to generate renewable energy and to provide a valuable organic fertiliser for farmland. For more information about how we treat and use sewage sludge please see 'Sewage sludge management'.

We continue to hit high rates of recycling for most of our operational waste streams. From the wastewater treatment process these are screenings, grit and incinerator ash. The table below shows the volumes and recycling rates we achieve for these.

We aim to improve the recycling rate for grit year on year through our contractural agreement with Sivyer. However, finding sustainable solutions for recycling grit and screenings remains a challenge. We are looking at long-term solutions to divert screenings from landfill in line with government and business targets for the next ten to 20 years. Screenings are comprised of plastics, rags, paper and sanitary products that have been disposed into the sewerage system. The sewer network is designed only to transport water, human waste and toilet paper, so other materials can cause serious problems, such as blockages, as well as generating unwanted wastes. We strongly encourage customers not to put any other inappropriate items down the toilet, which would in turn help to reduce the volume of screening waste we deal with each year. For more information, visit the Bin-it don't block it site.

Alan Young and Christine Vousden with the certificate from NJUG.

Office waste

At our head offices in Reading we have made great improvements over the last year in preventing, minimising and recycling office waste. By working with Mitie, our facilities management partners, we have diverted 68 per cent of our office waste away from landfill this year. We continue to look for ways to recycle more from our offices, and are currently looking at solutions for biodegradeable waste and glass, which we currently only recycle from our café.

Catering at our head office is provided by Baxter Storey, the only independent food supplier in the UK to have an Environmental Management System accredited to International Standards Organisation (ISO 14001) standard and to have been certified carbon neutral, as they run their fleet of delivery vans on recycled cooking oil. They have introduced a recycling scheme for used coffee grounds from the café, in which staff can take them home and use them as fertilizer in the garden.

We hope to have zero waste going to landfill from our head office by next year. To ensure we can achieve this, we are carrying out an audit of other wastes that we cannot currently recycle. Instead of a landfill site, these will be taken to an energy recovery unit to be put to beneficial use.

This year we also opened our new operations management centre at Green Park in Reading. This has many waste reduction schemes integrated into the design of the office. For example we use a 'follow-me' printing system which means that printers will only print once a staff member has entered a PIN code into the printer to retrieve their work. This minimises wasted paper from duplicated or abandoned print jobs.

We are looking to expand successful schemes such as this across all our office buildings to help us further improve our waste performance.