PUBLIC SECTOR SUSTAINABILITY KEEPING IT GREEN – DRAINA
here is increasing awareness that good sustainability isn’t just about what you do within your own organisation, it is about the suppliers you work with too. Stringent recycling and energy policies quickly become redundant if you are still merrily giving out work to suppliers who are yet to implement sustainable practices in their own businesses. Similarly, any effort to achieve a zero carbon footprint is rapidly undermined if the services you commission are hugely unsustainable. The best sustainability strategies legislate not only for internal practices, but those of the businesses you work with too.
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While the functioning of the drains and sewers beneath us is not a matter that most people give a great deal of thought to, when they malfunction they rise very quickly to the top of everyone’s agenda. But in the haste to get drains and sewers fixed, those responsible for sustainability should not fall into the trap of thinking that the technique used to repair them is not their concern.
It is the heavy machinery used to undertake the excavation traditionally required during drainage repair means that it can be a surprisingly carbon intensive business, but the proliferation of no-dig technology is set to change all that. Analogous to the keyhole surgery now prevalent in UK medicine, no-dig allows drainage engineers to carry out permanent and watertight localised repair of sewers and drains without any need for excavation – typically resulting in a 90 per cent reduction in carbon emissions.
GOING UNDERGROUND
In all drainage repair processes, the first step is to apply high pressure water jets in order to clean the drain or sewer, ensuring that the damaged area is not hidden by scale, debris or sludge. We then put a CCTV camera down in order to clearly identify the broken section of drain.
Once the exact location of the broken drain has been identified, we will then ascertain what the most appropriate repair method is. Sometimes, the location or type of the damage to piping will mean that we have no choice but to excavate, but increasingly we can suggest a no-dig repair. The two most common types of no-dig repairs are ‘cured in place pipe’ (CIPP) lining repairs, either for the full length of the sewer or drain, or for more localised areas of damage, a small ‘patch’ repair.
A CIPP lining is a repairing pipe in the form of a flexible tube impregnated with a
16 PUBLIC SECTOR SUSTAINABILITY • VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4
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