Wessex Water, a major UK company serving a large area of the South West, has made a strong commitment to sustainability. In 1998 it adopted a corporate Biodiversity Action Plan with the broad aims of minimising the company's impact on the environment and conserving biodiversity within its landholding.

The company then became, in 2003, a signatory of the UN Global Compact, which seeks to advance responsible action by business, based around nine principles covering human rights, labour standards and the environment.
Its efforts in making its activities more sustainable were rewarded last year when it won Best Large Scale Renewable Energy Project at the Regen SW awards. The award was for the installation of an Acid Phase Digester at its Avonmouth sewage sludge processing plant, one of only a few such plants in the UK.

Treating around 33,000 tonnes of sewage sludge per annum, the new technology has had immediate effects, with energy production up from 14.3GWh/annum to 23.6 GWh/annum. Meanwhile, the CO2 emission rate of the plant has been reduced by 75%, and the amount of liming required has also declined. Treated residue sludge is recycled locally to agriculture.