Carbon Neutral Wastewater Treatment

We said that by the end of 2022, our UK HQ will be carbon neutral. This means that all the activity that occurs in our office will result in no net carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.

We are proud to say that this is now true, and that Arvia has achieved CarbonNeutral® company certification in accordance with The CarbonNeutral Protocol, the leading global framework for carbon neutrality.

But it doesn’t stop there.

We have now begun work on our second pledge, making our production carbon neutral by the end of 2025. This means that we will also be offsetting the carbon produced by the materials used to make our water treatment units and the process of building them, further reducing our climate impacts.

Climate Impact Partners, specialist in carbon market solutions for climate action, helped us to calculate and verify our carbon footprint based of the activities that occur in and around our office. This assessment included everything from gas, electricity and water to measuring our waste and recycling. We also included business travel and hotel stays as well as the commuting impact of our staff, to and from the office. Additionally, this measurement took into account consumables like paper, as well as capital costs like printers, laptops and monitors.

We measured and included our outbound and inbound shipping impact as well, which is incurred when we delivered our water treatment systems around the world.
In doing these measurements we realised that to complete the next stage of carbon neutrality, we would have to put in place some new monitoring systems so that we can report how far every component has travelled before being part of our unique water treatment systems. This is our major task for the next year, and one we are taking very seriously.

After measuring and verifying our carbon footprint, as well as reducing internal emissions as much as possible, in order to achieve CarbonNeutral company certification next, we began compensating for unavoidable emissions by delivering finance to low-carbon sustainable development projects.

This is where we realised how important it was to have a climate partner of integrity. We read many stories about ‘greenwashing’ where companies think they are paying for trees to be planted, only to find the saplings had not been cared for with watering and protecting from wildlife, so they failed.

It was important to us to choose a partner who had integrity and showed evidence of real projects, which is what led us to work with Climate Impact Partners; an industry leader that has been delivering high-quality, high-impact carbon market solutions for more than 20 years.

After verified measurement and internal emissions reductions, an independent assessment resulted in Arvia offsetting 150 tonnes of carbon emissions through a global renewable energy portfolio.