Environmental, Social and Governance Initiative
This year’s best entries were characterized by being holistic in nature, reducing not only carbon, but costs and wastage, and financially supporting local environmental and community projects into the bargain. The judges admired entries that optimised different opportunities for tackling environmental and social issues, including recycling and reducing waste to landfill, while providing goods to local families and communities. “By focusing on sustainability, companies have been able to create genuine social benefits too,” explained one judge.
Particularly clever and/or unexpected ideas scored highest. “What I liked was where people seemed to have thought about an issue and really brought some innovation to the party,” another judge added. Companies that had clearly shown a desire to go above and beyond ESG regulatory requirements were also commended.
Reducing waste was a notable trend among the entries. “Recycling is making a comeback, having been somewhat sidelined by climate concerns. Reducing or eliminating waste was particularly important to our entrants this year.” Other trends included regionalisation and localisation and working within local communities to generate benefits.
Environmental, Social and Governance Initiative
This year’s best entries were characterized by being holistic in nature, reducing not only carbon, but costs and wastage, and financially supporting local environmental and community projects into the bargain. The judges admired entries that optimised different opportunities for tackling environmental and social issues, including recycling and reducing waste to landfill, while providing goods to local families and communities. “By focusing on sustainability, companies have been able to create genuine social benefits too,” explained one judge.
Particularly clever and/or unexpected ideas scored highest. “What I liked was where people seemed to have thought about an issue and really brought some innovation to the party,” another judge added. Companies that had clearly shown a desire to go above and beyond ESG regulatory requirements were also commended.
Reducing waste was a notable trend among the entries. “Recycling is making a comeback, having been somewhat sidelined by climate concerns. Reducing or eliminating waste was particularly important to our entrants this year.” Other trends included regionalisation and localisation and working within local communities to generate benefits.
Business Stream - Making a Positive difference to the environment and our local communities
Business Stream is one of the largest water retailers in the UK.
As a responsible business we believe we have an important role to play in driving positive change for the environment and society. To achieve this goal, we launched our initiative to make a positive difference (MAPD) to our people, our customers, the environment and our local communities, enabling us to give back to society and fulfil our role as environmental stewards.
In the past year we’ve delivered an ambitious programme that is helping to tackle the climate crisis and provide much needed support to our local communities.
Cambridge Water, South Staffordshire Plc and The Imperial War Museum - Ground source heating at IWM Duxford
Cambridge Water, South Staffordshire Plc and The Imperial War Museum Duxford have collaborated on an innovative decarbonisation project.
For the first time in the UK water sector, an existing regulated asset – a borehole supplying water to Cambridge Water customers - will be used to generate low carbon heat for IWM’s historic hangars and other, oil-fired, buildings.
Harnessing heat from boreholes is a sustainable, low carbon, environmentally friendly and efficient way to heat buildings, using no fossil fuels and has low energy requirements. Cambridge Water will invest income gained from the heat tariff into a community fund supporting local environmental projects.
Affinity Water - Save Our Streams
As the UK’s largest water-only supplier, we have one of the highest per capita consumption of water in the UK. Save Our Streams is the UK's largest water-saving initiative, highlighting this water waste and its impact on local streams to customers, aiming to save 17 million litres daily. Through a multi-channel campaign, we educated customers on water-saving and empowered them to reduce usage with tools like the ‘My Water Footprint’ quiz, digital hub, and the Affinity Water mascot, Duck. Our 2021/2022 campaign received over 90,000 new sign-ups and surpassed our target, saving 23.8 million litres of water daily.
National Grid - Active Creosote Extraction (ACE) project
The Active Creosote Extraction (ACE) Project is developing an innovative, new and environmentally friendly means of extracting creosote from wooden poles to enable their safe disposal or for them to be safely repurposed.
Cleansing the poles in this way will eliminate the need for thousands of tonnes of poles to be incinerated across multiple industries avoiding vast levels of C02 emissions and aiding the UK’s drive towards net zero.
So Energy - Contract Beyond the Contract
As a challenger energy supplier, So Energy launched its progressive ‘Contract Beyond the Contract’ initiative in August.
Acting as an extension of their new diversity and belonging strategy, this ‘contract’ calls on So Energy’s partners throughout their supply chain to work together to diversify the energy sector.
Committing to the ‘Contract Beyond the Contract’ signifies that their partners are just as serious as they are about making energy a sector where everyone can thrive.
To remain accountable for driving this change, So Energy will release a public annual report with updates on their, and their partners’, diversity metrics.
South West Water - South West Peatland Partnership
South West Water is the lead partner of the South West Peatland Partnership (SWPP), a collaboration between local and regional government agencies, charities, businesses, landowners and farmers across Exmoor, Dartmoor, Bodmin Moor and West Penwith.
As well as helping to increase resilience to climate change, the ongoing initiative aims to improve the quality and quantity of water flowing from peatlands, enhance wetland habitats and diversify wildlife species, and protect the upland historic environment.
SWPP also extensively monitors its work to assess impact and share learnings, connect people with peatlands and convey the importance of these threatened ecosystems.
Utilita Energy - Football Rebooted
Utilita’s ‘Football Rebooted’ boot recycling scheme is football’s biggest environmental movement, which has already helped to avoid more than 2,500 tonnes of CO2e normally generated by manufacturing new boots.
Meanwhile, this pro-planet scheme has helped cash-strapped parents’ pockets too, seeing approximately 200,000 pairs of quality football boots being claimed from Utilita’s 500 collection points.
With support from some of the biggest names in football the campaign is already a fifth of the way to saving one million pairs of boots from landfill and has the longevity to make boot recycling an important part of the beautiful game forever.