Sustainable Development Goals

We are firmly committed to playing our part in the realisation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and we’re proud to be part of an industry that has made a strong collaborative commitment to progress all 17 goals.

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. We are especially well-placed to deliver on Goal 6 in ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, and we have commenced work across all 17 goals.

Thinking globally, acting locally

Hunter Water is firmly committed to playing its part in the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals and is proud to be part of an industry that has made a strong collaborative commitment to progress all 17 objectives.

The SDGs offer a new way of thinking that challenges the traditional ‘business as usual’ approach and with increasing adoption across the nation and globe, will result in better alignment with emerging government policy. They also provide a common framework for engagement with stakeholders across our region and beyond.

Smart technology to reduce water consumption

In 2018-19, we trialled an intelligent control system called Smart Integrated Pump Scheduling (SIPS) to schedule our water pump operations, with the aim of reducing electricity usage and optimising network performance and costs. SIPS monitors and analyses water demand in real-time and learns the behaviour of the network. It then plans how assets need to operate to meet network constraints at the lowest cost.

Reducing our landfill

The total waste buried in landfill from Hunter Water’s head office and depots was reduced from 169 tonnes in 2017-18 to 148 tonnes in 2018-19. This 12% reduction is mostly attributed to our increased recycling efforts.

Our key waste minimisation achievements included:

• Our head office cut waste to landfill by one-third through the introduction of recycling streams.
• We have nine recycling streams at each of our depots, which means we can now recycle most things, including green waste.
• In 2018-19 we recycled 1.5 tonnes of soft plastics across head office and two of our depots.

Our first residential recycled water scheme

More than 1,100 homes in Chisholm and Gillieston Heights are connected to purple pipes that will carry recycled water as part of Hunter Water’s first residential recycled water scheme. It is estimated that each household will use 40% less drinking water, by instead using high quality treated wastewater for a range of non-drinking purposes such as flushing toilets, machine washing clothes and watering the garden.