Our transport journey: How we’re making our vans more environmentally friendly

Mark Johnson, Head of Transport and Commercial

The chances are, if you live within Wales or Hereford, you will have spotted one of our Welsh Water vans recently. But did you know that van is one of over 1250 vehicles roaming all over our operational area every day to keep your water running and to help take away your wastewater? 

Out of those, 1100 are the classic transit vans that you’ve most likely seen before. However we also have more specialist vehicles… including 75 sewer jetter vans, which are high pressure tanks to unblock sewers, and 75 heavy good vehicles which are used as tankers to transport water and wastewater. 

They’re used by our facilities management teams to look after our buildings, by our meter readers to read your water meters, by our communications team to host Q&A sessions in local communities, by our operations team to view sewers via CCTV cameras, by our lab team to transport water samples and by our reservoir visitor centre teams to put fish into the water. Every vehicle is different and that’s what makes our fleet so special. 

Even with such a specialist fleet, on a like-for-like basis, our CO2 emissions have reduced by around 20% since 2010. How have we done this? Well, it’s been a team effort, but here are some of the standout strategies we’ve used to get here:

• Our vans are now lighter than before - vehicle racking (the storage within our vans) and other on-board equipment is now 50% lighter than it was in 2009
• We ensure our fleet is maintained to high standards, including the replacement of components such as air filters to optimise engine performance
• Most of our vehicles use stop/start technology to reduce fuel consumption and emissions
• As an extra bonus for our colleagues, we have also had electric charging stations installed in several Welsh Water site car parks to encourage the use of electric cars by our 3500 staff 

It’s not just about lowering that all important carbon footprint. It’s also about keeping our colleagues and the communities we work in safe. Some of the tools we use do both: most of our vehicles are limited to 70 mph and have dashboard prompts for safe and environmental driving.

While we’ve made great progress in the last decade, there’s still always room for improvement and we’re forever thinking of new ways to reduce our carbon footprint. Just last month for example, we launched our transport dashboard, which allows each of our teams to keep a closer eye on their vehicles’ fuel spend and CO2 emissions.

As ever, we’ve got one eye on the future when it comes to reducing our carbon footprint. Who knows what technology we’ll be using in ten years’ time to help us get there!