Sustainability report 2009
Water
We believe the importance of conserving water will grow over the coming decade. Balfour Beatty will determine its own direct water use across its global operations and understand its indirect water footprint to determine where best to reduce consumption.
Why this matters to us
Water is becoming a scarcer resource in many parts of the world. The United Nations estimates that 2.8 billion people in 48 countries will face water stress or scarcity conditions by 2025. Pressure on water resources will continue as the world’s population grows. Our water use represents an operating cost as well as an environmental impact. These costs could rise and restrictions on usage affect our operations in times of drought. Water could well become the next ‘carbon’, with greater focus placed on it by regulators, policy makers and customers.
Our approach
We measure direct use of water from our own estate (offices, industrial sites such as factories and depots), and project sites (both mains and abstracted).
Our focus has been to reduce water usage in our premises (e.g. through the use of self-closing taps, waterless urinals and staff awareness campaigns) and on construction sites (e.g. capturing rainwater for plant cleaning, concrete batching and dust suppression). Our construction site cabins can also be supplied with rainwater harvesting systems.
We also seek to provide new buildings with water saving technologies such as water recycling and use of rainwater harvesting techniques.
Water use, whilst closely linked to climate change, needs to be addressed in a very different manner. Water needs to be managed at a local or river basin level rather than globally.
Our progress and performance
In 2009, our global consumption of water was 2,101,000 m3 compared to 1,686,000 m3 in 2008. Our water consumption grew due to increased activity in our Far East and Middle East construction operations, together with our US construction business reporting for the first time.
In 2009, relative to revenue, our global use of water at 191 m3 per £m sales, reduced by 8% compared to 2005 at 208 m3 / £m revenue.
What’s next?
We believe the issue of water management will increase in importance in the coming decade. Security of supply and accounting for water use by large organisations will grow in importance. Future water shortages could lead to conflict and population migrations but also provide opportunities for new and upgraded water treatment infrastructure and innovative solutions for supplying our water needs.
We will measure our own water use across our global operations by the end of 2010 in order to develop a robust baseline from which to track our performance. We have set ourselves a 10% reduction target per £m revenue by the end of 2012 against this baseline.
Researching and understanding our wider water footprint, encompassing the water embodied in the materials we use, or consumed in their manufacture, will also help us to determine where best reductions can be made.
We are encouraging a sector wide approach for water footprinting, through our membership of the UK Contractors’ Group (UKCG) and working with the Strategic Forum for Construction in the UK. In addition to developing future strategies for the sector, we are leading the development of common metrics and best practice in water use during the construction phase. This is very much a gap in the market with little attention being paid to how construction companies can minimise their water use in their day-to-day operations on-site.
2012 target
Reduce our direct use of water by 10% by 2012 per £m revenue against a 2010 baseline.