Environmental impact management

Aqualia recognises the economic, social and –above all– environmental values of water, the main activity of the organisation. Because of this, one of its main ends is that the management of this resource is carried out efficiently based on respect for and protection of the natural environment.

Continuous improvement of the management of Aqualia's environmental impact

Aqualia’s integrated environmental management system is based on the ISO 14001 standard which defines and sets the necessary control and monitoring mechanisms to minimise the company's impact on the environment.

94% of Aqualia's activity in Spain is certified in accordance with the ISO 14001 standard for environmental management systems. Taking into account the total national and international activity, the scope of the activities covered by the environmental management system is some 86.4% – 12% more than all the activity certified in 2015.

In 2016, Aqualia became one of the first Spanish companies to adapt to the innovations implemented in the ISO 14001:2015 standard. The new standard strengthens the concept of the leadership of environmental management and includes new criteria in its scope that referr to aspects such as the environment in which the company operates and attention to the expectations of stakeholders, among other questions.

Taking advantage of the updating of the processes and procedures, Aqualia also carried out a functional and territorial restructuring of its organisation to drive the continuous improvement of the integrated environmental management system.

Implantation and certification of the energy management system

The efficient and rational use of energy is an essential aspect in Aqualia’s responsible environmental management.

For this reason, and to comply with Royal Decree 56/2016, approved in February, Aqualia decided to implement an energy management system in 2006, certified according to the ISO 50001 standard involving the setting up of quantifiable objectives to optimise the use of energy resources in its activity.

Following the example of Aqualia in Spain, SmVaK became the second water management company in the Czech Republic to implement and certify its activity as per the ISO 50001 standard.

Additionally, a change of strategy took place during the year regarding management of energy purchasing and the activity was centralised to generate new opportunities before the renewal of the management contracts close to expiry. The immersion in the market prices indexed to the market has favoured a saving of 20% in the contracting of the electricity supply for next year (2017).