Davey Water Products hosted a visit from the Premier John Brumby at its headquarters in the Caribbean Gardens Industrial Park in Scoresby. The company wide focus on sustainability won Davey Water Products the Large Business Award in the 2008 Premier’s Sustainability Awards.
Davey spokesman Max Ekins said the visit provided an excellent opportunity to showcase the suite of water products developed by Davey that enable consumers to achieve high efficiency in their water and energy use. “Davey’s approach to sustainability has been embraced in all our internal processes, factory accommodation and new product development.” “Twelve months ago we established cross functional environmental teams addressing aspects of landfill wastes, recycling and emissions.”
Mr Ekins said that some of the key achievements to date include a reduction in all grades of waste going to landfill from 350 cubic metres to 65 cubic metres a month – an 82% reduction by volume and 42% by weight. In addition Davey initiated a project to harvest the rain water which falls on the factory roof to show the value that industry can contribute to water conservation. Nearly two million litres of rainwater has been harvested in the past year. It is used to flush the toilets as well as supplying rinse water for the powder coating pre-treatment line. “This alone has saved 90% of the site’s water consumption, and we have plans to become 100% water self-sufficient within 12 months” Mr Ekins noted.
One team has worked on reducing the emissions of CO² in the factory. “While our overall output has remained unchanged Davey has achieved a 30% reduction in greenhouse gases per pump made” Mr Ekins added.
Davey’s sustainability concept has also extended to the products the company markets. These include the unique Celsior and Silensor water cooled pumps for swimming pool and spa bath. A typical result is a 30% reduction in the energy consumed in water heating due to recovery of waste heat. These pumps have 25% less material and 60% less energy consumed in the production process over traditional air cooled motors. This yields an estimated saving of 3,277 tonnes of green house gases per annum. Davey has been the world leader in the development of automatic rainwater harvesting controllers.
Its RainBank is the first product that allows home owners to utilise stored rain water over potable water for toilet and laundry applications. “We estimate that the RainBank systems now installed across Australia are saving close to 40% of the average 360,000 litres of mains water per home per year. This is a massive 5,760 megalitres per year of potable water, or nearly 6,000 Olympic pools full of water every year,” Said Mr Ekins.
“Success in the 2008 (Victorian) Premier’s Award for Sustainability in the Large Company Category is a significant achievement for all at Davey Water Products, and we were very proud to be able to demonstrate this first hand to Premier John Brumby. “I anticipate our success will encourage many other businesses to review their internal sustainability practices and procedures and with a company wide approach will be able to reap significant benefits” Mr Ekins concluded.
Photo Caption Victorian Premier the Hon. John Brumby views Davey Water Product’s Rainbank production cell with Davey's Max Ekins
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