As an industry at the forefront of climate change that contributes around 1% of national GHG emissions*, it’s no surprise that things are changing quickly in the water sector. Many of these developments are driven by legislation. For the first time ever, OFWAT has included a requirement within the Periodic Review 2009 process for all water companies to report not only on their operational carbon footprint, but also the embodied carbon impact of their operations and investment decisions.
As a supplier, Verder is committed to helping you meet these requirements by supporting the supply chain across the four key areas: operational, embodied, supply chain and product carbon foot-printing. To make it easier for water companies to scrutinise their supply chain and be carbon pro-active, we have prepared some key points to help clients choose the most sustainable pumping solutions.
PRODUCT
1. Has sustainability been designed into the product components themselves?
For example, the use of standard drives and lower overall component count simplifies product, reduces weight and keeps unnecessary costs down. Seal-less design eliminates the potential failure of shaft sealing, providing zero leakage, and full secondary containment to protect the workforce and environment should a problem occur.
2. Do the products you’re using include total air gap separation?
Other specific design features you need to look out for include total air gap separation which means pump and drive are totally separated to eliminate potential for cross contamination of product and make maintenance easier.
3. Are you getting the best possible longevity from your products?
Improved rotor and hose configuration can increase hose life by 40%, reduce power requirement and eliminate overhung loads. For example Verder’s L10 bearing life on pump and drive is in excess of 50,000 hours. The overall effect is improved reliability, reduced component count over the life time of the unit and reduced whole life time costs.
SUPPLY CHAIN
4. Is your supplier UK based?
Are the products from your suppliers designed, manufactured and supported from the UK? As well as the obvious lower carbon footprint implications, using a UK based manufacturer provides local access to key personnel and inward domestic investment. Distribution of manufactured products from the UK to the UK also has less environmental impact.
WASTE
5. Is your supplier environmentally responsible?
Does your supplier offer innovative designs such as smaller products that require less material, take up less space in smaller plant rooms and reduce stock holding. A further advantage is reduced packing and shipment costs.
ENERGY EFFICIENCY & RECYCLING
6. Is there a commitment to ongoing research and development?
To demonstrate our commitment to research and development for example, Verder has achieved ISO14001 – a recognised standard for an organisation’s environmental management system. Research into environmental impact is executed continuously in close collaboration with authoritative national institutions such as TNO (the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research), the German Jenoptik and the University of Leeds (UK). We take our environmental responsibility seriously and want to help clients in all the industries in which we work including water to embrace more sustainable solutions that are better for industry and our planet.”
7. Does your supplier measure its carbon footprint?
Manufacturers can obtain carbon footprint reports to assess their current performance as well as get advice on ways to continuously improve their impact. The report takes into account gas and electricity energy consumption, as well as the impact of company vehicles and water usage. The total emissions are then split by those under the direct control of the supplier (Scope 1), those within their indirect control (Scope 2) and everything else (Scope 3).
Verder has completed such a report and it found that the majority of our emissions are outside of our control, such as employee commuting and outsourced activities, but we are already working with partners on solutions for these aspects as well as improving the activities within our control. The undertaking of this report has given us so much useful information on where and how we need to improve our carbon footprint, we are taking it to the next level by commissioning a product footprinting exercise to ensure our products are performing in the best possible way to help reduce our customer’s carbon footprint.
*http://www.water.org.uk/home/policy/climate-change/mitigation
