Respect the Throne this World Toilet Day

We’re calling on the Lower Hunter community to play its part in ensuring sustainable sanitation, by respecting the throne this World Toilet Day.

Hunter Water manages 5,313 kilometres of pipes to ensure our region’s system can reliably service wastewater from more than 250,000 properties. What we flush down the toilet can have a big impact on that system.

While we’re fortunate in Lower Hunter, more than 4.2 billion people around the world don’t have access to safe sanitation. World Toilet Day aims to raise awareness of this and take action to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 – water and sanitation for all by 2030.

Hunter Water is firmly committed to playing its part in the realisation of the SDGs. We have signed the Water Services Association of Australia’s urban water commitment to promote the SDGs across the industry and within our communities to build a more sustainable and prosperous future.

Among our initiatives helping to realise the SDGs is the connection of more than 1,100 homes in Chisholm and Gillieston Heights to recycled water for non-drinking purposes such as flushing toilets and watering the garden, as part of our first residential recycled water scheme.

We also beneficially reuse 100% of the biosolids produced from our 19 wastewater treatment plants. Biosolids are the by-product of the wastewater treatment process and consist mainly of a mix of water and organic materials. Our plants produce about 45,000 wet tonnes each year, which is reused for land applications such as farming and mine rehabilitation.