Nominations for the Stockholm Industry Water Award will be accepted until the end of February 2001 from businesses that have contributed to pollution elimination or reduced freshwater consumption through innovative programmes, policies, processes or products. The winning company will be selected by an international nominating committee established by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, which includes members from academia, business, water organisations, and water science.
The award was founded with the intention of stimulating business contributions to sustainable water development, and recognises:
- innovative corporate development of water and wastewater process technologies;
- environmental improvement through improved performance in production processes;
- new products or technologies;
- other significant corporate contributions to helping improve the world water situation.
The first Stockholm Industry Water Award was presented this year to Northumbrian Water Ltd, of the United Kingdom, for its “forward looking initiative at achieving a regional solution to sewage treatment and disposal, in co-operation with local government and regulatory agencies, businesses and other non-governmental organisations”. According to the nominating committee, the company used innovative solutions to provide a treatment facility that could deal with the area’s sewage and local industry’s waste, constructing treatment facilities on top of a brown field site created by the capping of a chemical waste tip. The facilities also accept industrial effluent from a number of major companies, and have resulted in what has been hailed as the Tees River’s “biggest clean up since the Industrial Revolution”.