Page 12 - Food&Drink Business magazine September 2022

COVER STORY
Striving for zero
Global water and wastewater treatment technology solutions company Hydroflux recently achieved carbon neutral certification. CEO of Hydroflux subsidiary Cress Consulting Julia Seddon, and members of the company’s executive, talk to Kim Berry about the process and benefits of striving for zero.
IT was 18 months ago that industrial water management company Hydroflux decided to “get its house in order” when it came to its own environmental credentials and carbon footprint.
The company employs more than 100 people across several business units, providing water and wastewater management equipment, products, and services. Environmental and sustainability services firm Cress Consulting is also part
of the group.
Cress CEO and director Julia Seddon recounts that it was an internal sustainability analysis that set Hydroflux on its carbon neutral journey.
“The analysis pointed to a number of big opportunities with reducing carbon emissions at the top. Becoming carbon neutral involves understanding your emissions, reducing them, and looking to offset what’s left.
Then it is a process of each year just getting better and better at those steps. Carbon neutral certification requires annual review and updates to make sure what the company is reporting is accurate,” she says.
Hydroflux CEO Adrian Minshull says the certification is the first step for the company in “doing everything possible” to reduce its impact on the environment.
Hydroflux director Andrew Miley adds that sustainability is a major plank of its business model.
“We see the business as having a role in raising awareness around the value and the preciousness of water as well as carbon neutrality,” Miley says.
BEING CLIMATE ACTIVE
The Australian government backed body, Climate Active, is the vehicle that drives voluntary climate action to
Cress Consulting CEO Julia Seddon
measure, reduce, and offset carbon emissions in the business community. Its Climate Active Carbon Neutral Standard is regarded as one of the most rigorous certification programs in the world.
“The standard is robust, well recognised, and respected,” says Seddon.
The standard was formerly the National Carbon Offset Standard, which had been in place since 2010. Climate Active came into being in 2019. On average, it takes a company
six to 12 months to achieve certification.
Minshull says, “Climate Active certification is aligned with our values, business objectives and future direction, and connects our activities in the sustainable water and energy arena with our carbon emission reduction goals and our mission to protect our most valuable resources.”
But the process is not without its challenges.
Seddon says, “It’s a reasonably new thing to become carbon neutral, but in a lot of ways it is still done the old school way, at least initially.
“It is a technical process, not straightforward or particularly intuitive, with a lot of manual work that is tedious in terms of gathering and presenting data. There is room for some sort of digital improvement for data to be
12 | Food&Drink business | September 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au