Melbourne Water's Sustainability Practices

This assignment examines Melbourne Water's commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It delves into their policies, programs, and strategies that promote sustainability in both the social and environmental spheres. The analysis highlights how Melbourne Water integrates CSR into its daily operations, making it a global leader in corporate sustainability. Specific examples of their initiatives, such as recycled water use for irrigation, are discussed to illustrate their effectiveness in benefiting the community.

MELBOURNE
WATER CSR
B Y ( S T U D E N T ’ S N A M E )
P R O F E S S O R ’ S N A M E
C O L L E G E
C O U R S E
D A T E

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Melbourne Water supplies drinking as well as recycled water besides manages
Melbourne’s water supply catchment, and rivers, creeks, sewage treatment alongside
main drainage systems.
• Melbourne Water’s Western Treatment Plant (WTP) is located in Werribee, southwest of
Melbourne and the largest water treatment facility in Victoria.
• It is treating over half of the city’s wastewater.
• The WTP contributes much past wastewater management including a substantial
recycled water program for the domestic irrigators that offer essential support for the
food production for the ever growing city over four million.
• The WTP remains an extraordinary asset for the community of Victoria as well as a world
class instances of sustainability.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CONT.
• WTP generates almost forty billion liters of the recycled water yearly, and runs in a holistic,
integrated manner acknowledging the environment as a fundamental portion of the treatment
system.
• The WTP achieves the low cost sewage treatment through gravity flows, lagoon treatment,
renewable energy as well as recycled water application to land under use for vast acre
cropping.
• The WTP further utilizes biogas to meet nearly all its electricity requirements that bars 87,000
tons of CO2 from emission via burning of the fossil fuels per year.
• The Plant uses diverse water sources like rainwater, recycled water as well as stormwater as an
important component of decreasing the demand on water supply system.
• The plant uses the recycled water for supporting the local agriculture, sustainable as well as
management besides economic development.

INTRODUCTION
• The paper presents a description and discussion of how the components of
CSR (environmental and social) are practiced in Melbourne Water.
• It further presents a perspective by evaluating how the two components of
CSR in Melbourne Water impact the local community.
• Finally, the report presents a brief discussion supported by appropriate
literature on CSR linked to what has been outlined above.

HOW MELBOURNE WATER PRACTICE
CSR COMPONENTS
• The practice of these social and environmental components of CSR is anchored on the Melbourne
Water’s vision, “Enhancing Life and Liveability” that is achieved through Melbourne Water’s world
class water services.
• The services of Melbourne Water support community wellbeing, strengthen its reputation as the
desirable place to live as well as enhance the surrounding natural environment.
• Melbourne Water achieves its CSR outcomes by continuing to evolve the manner in which they
operate their business.
• The focus is mainly on delivery of a customer-oriented service as well as creating a high
performing environment thereby inspiring the employees to achieve.
• The Melbourne Water embed continuous improvement in each of its facet of the service.
• The Melbourne Water remains committed to delivering its services in the cost effective as well as
financially sustainable environment (Water 2005).

HOW MELBOURNE WATER PRACTICE
CSR COMPONENTS CONT.
• The Melbourne Water uses a Corporate Plan 2016-17 already drawn as the statement of its corporate intention according to
section 248 of the Victorian Water Act 1989.
• Under this plan, the strategies as well as approaches for practicing the two components to achieve safe as well as reliable
water services for supporting sustainable alongside liveable communities besides to continue the delivery of efficient as
well as affordable water services that their customer value.
• Melbourne Water uses office sustainability programs when practicing social and environmental components of CSR.
• The office sustainability programs in Melbourne Water encourage its workers to think as well as act sustainably at both
home and work.
• These programs promote sustainability via resource reduction targets, facility upgrades as well as building knowledge of
the sustainable practices.
• The officeSmart program has helped the Melbourne Water to set key performance indicators to measure their office
sustainability targeting office-electricity use reduction, water consumption reduction, reducing waste volume sent to landfill
as well as paper utilization.
• The Melbourne Water’s worker-led OfficeSmart cohort supports such targets by inspiring others to assume their bit in
decreasing the environmental influence.

HOW MELBOURNE WATER PRACTICE
CSR COMPONENTS CONT.
• The Melbourne Water has sustainable sites that facilitate the continual improvement of facilities crossways all Melbourne
Water’s building thereby helping in the reduction of resource consumption as well as improvement of their efficiency.
• Melbourne Water undertakes such improvements as mobile phones recycling, DVDs/CD recycling, corks reuse, light-globes
as well as batteries at its main sites.
• It has also undertaken improvement on organic waste collection as well as comingled recycling at each chief sites,
decreasing waste sent to the landfill.
• It has also improved the removal of excess lights alongside substituting them with the energy-efficient globes.
• Melbourne Water has also improved the installation of rainwater tanks for the reduction of its portable water consumption.
• Melbourne Water further practices the components of the CSR via additional programs including sustainability training,
bicycle users group, ECO-Buy memberships that have built leadership and technical skills; encouraged cycling to work
and; promoted sustainable purchasing in that order.
• Additionally, Melbourne Water uses policies alongside processes to embed sustainability into its daily work (Greenland,
Dalrymple, Levin and O’Mahony 2018).
• These include for instance, the triple bottom line guidelines that make sure Melbourne Water consider community,
environmental as well as impacts financially when planning as well as capital projects delivery.

HOW MELBOURNE WATER PRACTICE
CSR COMPONENTS CONT.
• Also, system for managing environment alongside public-health has been used to set requirements for the
management of its risk alongside meeting international standards.
• Further, environment policy has been created thereby guiding Melbourne Water activities that properly meet
obligations environmentally.
• Sustainable procurement policy is also used to facilitate the practice of the components of CSR by allowing
Melbourne Water workers to regard environmental, financial, as well as social elements when they purchase
from the suppliers.
• Melbourne Water additional use such policies and procedures including accessibility inclusion plan, code of
conduct, community policy dam pre-release and surcharge policy and environmental stewardship policy
among others in practicing both social and environmental components of CSR.
• The environmental stewardship policy helps drive its commitment to the protection of its natural and cultural
assets whereas dam pre-release and surcharge policy is instrumental in defining Melbourne Water’s
operational practices in connection to pre-release and surcharge of its dams in the course of significant rainfall
events (Soderstrom 2013).

HOW MELBOURNE WATER PRACTICE
CSR COMPONENTS CONT.
• Health, safety and wellbeing policy is further of additional importance to Melbourne water.
• It helps see people as important that if Melbourne Water cannot assure them in the manner they work,
Melbourne Water will never do that work at all or till suitable as well as safe alternatives is arrived at.
• Community policy indicate how the community consultation is valued in Melbourne Water for efficient
management of any project undertaken and further an essential component of all Melbourne Water budgeting,
planning as well as implementation process of CSR (Taylor 2005).
• The accessibility inclusion plan appreciates the significant role that individuals with disability play in Melbourne
Water community and within the organization itself.
• Melbourne Water is thus committed to the removal of obstacles that exist for individuals with disability and
their respective carers.
• The social and environmental components of Melbourne Water’s CSR are further practices through well set key
strategies and plans including waterways besides drainage investment plan, healthy-waterways alongside
stormwater strategies, better bays as well as waterways plan together with flood management strategies.

IMPACTS OF PRACTICE ON LOCAL
COMMUNITY
• The practices have positively contributed to the reduction of the challenges that community face in
terms of population growth alongside climate change that have placed increasing pressure on water
supplies.
• Melbourne Water’s use of diverse water sources like rainwater, recycled water alongside stormwater
have increasingly reduced the demand on water supply system hence a benefit to the community.
• This is because the recycled water from the WTP remains a valuable resource that the support the
local agriculture in the community, sustainable land management as well as economic development
(Santos, Cook, Rogers, Weys and Eyre 2012).
• The Werribee South subsequently covers an area of about 3,000 hectares and its position in close
proximity to WTP, has helped it produce enormous quantities of a broad range of fresh produce that
is consumed all around Australia as well as internationally exported thereby bring income and other
economic gains to the community.

IMPACTS OF PRACTICE
ON LOCAL COMMUNITY
CONT.• Local farmers have also benefited from the Werribee Irrigation District Recycled Water
Scheme saves to WTP.
• Thus feeding recycled water from WTP straight into irrigation systems for more than 90
domestic farmers thereby supplementing their water allocation (Chan 2015).
• The WTP further avails a significant site for ecological research as well as birdwatchers
since it has been voted the leading birdwatching sites in Birdlife Australia.
• The Melbourne Water has further continued to work with local farmers, retail water
businesses and private water business.
• Thereby identifying novel opportunities for the provision of enhanced community value
via its recycled water as well as wastewater services while at the same time enhancing
its contribution to the UN sustainable development goals.

BRIEF DISCUSSION ON
CSR
• Sustainability practices in Melbourne Water remain an essential part of how the organization
carry out its business.
• Melbourne CSR practices considers the long-term interest of community as well as upcoming
generations, and corresponding solutions endeavor to balance outcomes socially alongside
environmentally.
• The organization uses effective policies and programs that embed sustainability into its
everyday CSR work thus detailing the reason for being a global leader in corporate
sustainability (Brown and Clarke 2007).
• Melbourne Water has a leading environmental performance in both Australia and international
water utilities.
• Thus, the benefits that it extends to the community through its recycled water as a supplement
to irrigation water to local farmers thus stamps its CSR effectiveness.

CONCLUSION
• To this end, the paper has presented a detailed description and discussion
on how Melbourne Water practices the social and environmental of CSR.
• It has been shown that Melbourne Water uses a number plans, strategies,
policies, procedures and programs that help it achieve effective CSR that
benefit the community it serves.

REFERENCES
• Brown, R.R. and Clarke, J.M., 2007. Transition to water sensitive urban design: The story of Melbourne, Australia (Vol. 7, No.
1). Melbourne: Facility for Advancing Water Biofiltration, Monash University.
• Chan, N.W.W., 2015. Integrating social aspects into urban water pricing: Australian and international perspectives. In
Understanding and Managing Urban Water in Transition (pp. 311-336). Springer Netherlands.
• Greenland, S.J., Dalrymple, J., Levin, E. and O’Mahony, B., 2018. Improving Agricultural Water Sustainability: Strategies for
Effective Farm Water Management and Encouraging the Uptake of Drip Irrigation. In The Goals of Sustainable Development
(pp. 111-123). Springer, Singapore.
• Santos, I.R., Cook, P.L., Rogers, L., Weys, J.D. and Eyre, B.D., 2012. The “salt wedge pump”: Convection‐driven pore‐water
exchange as a source of dissolved organic and inorganic carbon and nitrogen to an estuary. Limnology and Oceanography,
57(5), pp.1415-1426.
• Soderstrom, N., 2013. Sustainability reporting: past, present, and trends for the future. Insights, 13, pp.31-37.
• Taylor, A., 2005. Structural stormwater quality BMP cost–size relationship information from the literature. Cooperative
Research Centre for Catchment Hydrology, Melbourne, pp.53-64.
• Water, M., 2004. Melbourne's Rivers and Creeks 2004. Melbourne Water.
• Water, M., 2005. WSUD Engineering Procedures: Stormwater: Stormwater. CSIRO PUBLISHING.