Our Environmental Ethos

Our Vision:

The country will be free of pollution, with clean waterways and healthy ground.

We all produce waste: at home and at the places where we work. It’s an inevitable, unavoidable part of life.

What is avoidable is the way we deal the waste we create. But that requires questions to be asked:

• Can waste levels be reduced, or even minimised?
• Can the waste be more responsibly managed?
• If not, why not – and what can we do about that?
• Or if it can, what has to happen to bring about that change?

Every day, we ask all these questions, and many more, to ensure that we’re able to offer the cleanest, safest, most responsible forms of waste management we can. When we answer those questions, we’re often able to offer more environmentally-friendly outcomes than others in our industry. And when we do that, you can be sure that your environmental credentials are as impressive as they can be.

We’re all becoming more aware of the after-effects of irresponsible waste disposal (the so-called ‘Blue Planet Effect’) and we’re finding it increasingly uncomfortable to see. Public opinion influences legislation, which forces changes in business practice. Our Ethos ensures that we’re always ahead of legislation and that we’re able to offer services that others don’t – or perhaps can’t.

Like anything that’s industry-leading, achieving it isn’t always easy. But it’s important that we try: important to our people, important to your reputation and, most of all, important to our planet.

Industry has been responsible for most of the pollution of the last hundred years. In recent decades, increasing levels of regulation has forced better practices and required waste creators to take responsibility for the safe treatment of their waste. Our expertise allows us to develop better techniques, to lessen the environmental impact of waste and to improve our customers’ impact.

Many historic practices of dumping waste in waterways are now illegal but, of those that remain, phosphate build-up can cause significant problems.  The reduction of phosphates from the sewage treatment process ensures a return to natural levels in our streams and rivers, which leads to a healthier environment for the species that live there.

The same is true of land-based disposal, with landfill a far less legitimate option for most forms of waste.  A common consequence of polluted ground is that nearby waterways are also polluted.  Reducing one form generally reduces the other.