December 14, 2022
circular-economy collaboration consumers innovation innovation-in-water-challenge vulnerable-consumers winnersPeople increasingly expect companies in all sectors to behave ethically and consider their wider impact – be it on their employees, the environment or society. Research carried out by Deloitte shows that sustainability remains a key consideration for consumers in 2021 with 32% of consumers highly engaged with adopting a more sustainable lifestyle – and 28% of consumers stopped buying certain products due to ethical or environmental concerns.
According to the Consumer Council for Water’s “Public views on the water environment” report published this month, during a year of pandemic and lockdowns people have also valued water environments greatly and recognised how important they are. In the month before taking part in the research, just over half of participants reported having visited a water environment such as a river, stream, lake, reservoir or canal, whilst around a third had visited a beach. The need to look after and maintain water environments for future generations was raised by participants throughout this research and there was widespread agreement that collective action is essential to address problems facing these environments.
Water companies in England and Wales are ideally placed to provide significant social and environmental benefits as they carry out their core function of delivering water and wastewater services for customers.
The water sector is already delivering public health and environmental benefits and there is a strong public service ethos amongst those working in the sector. But there is scope for the companies to do much more without distracting from their core functions or making water unaffordable.
At the same time there is an increasing need for companies to speak with and listen to their customers in planning, delivering and improving services. And yet, research by CCW found in 2019 that over the last six years, customer engagement on day-to-day issues has been falling in England and has remained largely unchanged in Wales. Even over the last year of lockdown with companies stepping up their activities, customer perceptions and experience of engagement have decreased further in some cases.
Do you have an innovative idea that could shake up and enhance the water sector’s business-as-usual processes and help to deliver wider public value? Check out the case studies below for inspiration – two of the winning Innovation in Water Challenge projects are testing novel methods of working for the benefit of their consumers. Keep up to date with information on future rounds of the Innovation Fund competitions by exploring our website.
In light of extreme weather events in recent years, such as the Beast from the East, the scorching summer of 2018 and numerous storm events, the UK water sector has received feedback that it needs to do more to support customers who are in vulnerable circumstances.
The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) has also conducted research that found that, in some communities, awareness of the support that is available during operational incidents is quite low. The sector needs to improve its understanding of and response to customer vulnerability, particularly the harder-to-reach communities.
While companies are already undertaking a number of activities in support of the Priority Services Register (PSR) (a free support service to help people in vulnerable situations), sharing data and engaging with customers from a debt management perspective to offer affordability support, there is a need to expand this to include customers impacted by operational incidents. Current approaches focus largely on educating customers that the PSR exists and that certain people are eligible to sign up to it. But this does not get to the heart of what customers need and does not offer any deeper understanding of the barriers to engagement.
The water sector has not previously conducted in-depth analysis into the communities they serve. The ‘Supporting customers in vulnerable circumstances project’ will use behavioural science, applying ethnographic principles, to understand who the water sector’s consumers really are. The project aims to understand consumer engagement needs and intends to re-engage consumers as trusted sources of information for the sector. The project is led by Severn Trent Water in partnership with the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), South East Water and Thames Water.
Using behavioural science and design thinking methodology, the project will determine the relationships between the types of communication methods used to connect with consumers and their effectiveness. This will involve conducting research and trials, focussing on a demographically diverse pilot location in Leicester, to test and ascertain how the right campaigns and support can be directed to those most in need. The insights obtained will be used to tailor customer journeys and communication channels to be more appropriate and effective, facilitating a step-change improvement for the water sector in the engagement of hard-to-reach customers and communities.
At the end of the project, findings and recommendations will be shared with the water sector to discuss ways of taking them forward through a communication and dissemination plan. The work will aim to inform the sector of effective approaches of engaging with hard-to-reach communities, allowing companies to look at their own products and services and understand where this work can enhance customer journeys and offerings to vulnerable customers. The learnings and approach taken can be applied without geographical constraints.
Severn Trent Water would advise people considering entering future rounds of the competitions to ensure that benefits to customers, society and the environment are genuinely at the core of their projects and to aim to address a broad challenge or opportunity that could provide a step-change improvement for the sector and other industries.
There is a growing call for a transition to a circular economy, which minimises waste and pollution and keeps materials in use for as long as possible. This transition would reduce our demand for raw materials, and could drastically reduce the energy used to manufacture products. To date, there have been limited examples of water companies working with other sectors to apply circular economy principles, and more information is required on how best to embed these opportunities into their business-as-usual processes.
This project aims to generate these insights, by trialling a cloud-based resource matching platform to support the adoption of ‘industrial symbiosis’ across the water sector in England and Wales. ‘Industrial symbiosis’ is the process of turning the waste or by-products from one industry (for example, excess heat) into valuable materials for another (such as energy), and could be a key stepping stone towards a circular economy for the sector.
Industrial symbiosis is not a new concept. International Synergies Limited pioneered this approach in the UK in 2002 and has replicated it in over 20 countries worldwide. The push now is to encourage culture change for mainstream integration, widening the frontier of engagement to the entire water sector.
To this end, United Utilities is leading a partnership with Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water), Jacobs, Severn Trent Water and International Synergies Ltd to build new relationships across sectors and in new supply chains. By developing an engagement methodology, the project will build a collaborative network of organisations outside the sector, identifying opportunities for the supply and demand of reused and repurposed materials to create and test a new market.
Effectively implementing industrial symbiosis as a ‘business-as-usual’ process for the water sector will deliver long-term sustainable development benefits for the economy, environment, and society by:
In a nutshell – industrial symbiosis is the circular economy in action!
