Sustainability
Our commitment to social, environmental and economic sustainability is captured by our organisational purpose: to support the health and wellbeing of our customers, and create a brighter future for communities and the natural environment.
People, planet, prosperity
We are making our contribution to a healthy planet. Our regenerative approach to the environment means delivering our services without compromising the water needed for healthy waterways. Natural resources are finite. To be sustainable in the long-term, we must reduce our impact on the environment and work within the carrying capacity of nature.
We are working to generate 100 per cent of our own energy and be carbon zero by 2025, and then go beyond zero carbon by 2030. We are moving towards a more circular economy in the way we work and operate. We also aim to contribute to healthy ecosystems, including having a proactive approach to enhancing biodiversity on our land.
We support people by delivering safe and reliable water and sanitation. The public expects that we will provide safe drinking water, a reliable service and will be responsive when things go wrong. Our commitment in this area is watertight.
We doubled our social value – increasing our contribution to public health and wellbeing – under our 2020 strategy. We’re implementing programs across vulnerability and hardship, family violence, reconciliation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and community health.
We are supporting inclusive, sustainable growth and prosperity, within our organisation and in wider society. We maintain Australian benchmarks for high-performance organisations. We safeguard intergenerational equity by investing responsibly and planning adaptively for the future, ensuring that the communities we serve will never run out of water. We are committed to low prices – specifically, to a price freeze in 2017-18, followed by bill increases lower than the rate of inflation.
United Nations Global Compact and Sustainable Development Goals
We are a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact – the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. This commits us to ensuring our strategies and policies align with the compact’s ten principles, which cover human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. It also commits us to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and to reporting on our progress.
United Nations Global Compact website
We are committed to the SDGs. This is a set of 17 global goals describing what a prosperous yet sustainable world looks like. We are contributing to the SDGs through every aspect of our business, from human resources and procurement processes, to customers experiencing vulnerability, to where we source our energy.
In 2016, our Managing Director, Pat McCafferty, signed a public CEO Statement of Support these goals along with over thirty other leaders in the Australian business community.
We have measured our performance against the SDGs to understand our contribution to a sustainable future, and to identify where we can do more.
Our reporting on our approach and performance under the SDGs sets out the practical actions we’re taking to progress the principles of the compact and measures our success.
Read and download our SDG reporting
Modern Slavery Statement
Yarra Valley Water recognises that modern slavery practices are a serious violation of human rights and we do not tolerate any form of modern slavery in our business or supply chain. We believe all workers should be treated with dignity and respect and recognise each person's rights to freedom, justice and fair work conditions.
Our annual statement, as required under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Commonwealth), details actions we've taken to understand and address modern slavery risks in our business, operations and supply chain.
Read our Modern Slavery Statement 2022-23