Working with businesses

A joint responsibility for the environment

At the South East Rivers Trust, we believe that every sector of society has a responsibility to look after the world around them, as individuals or groups. We value the huge contribution that businesses can make in supporting work to protect our life-sustaining rivers, for the benefit of wildlife and the communities who enjoy them.

We recognise that corporate social responsibility has become integral to many companies’ values. Businesses and their staff are increasingly conscious of the environment and social issues in a company’s governance, whether in the office, through their supply chains or by becoming directly involved in conservation.

Here are just some of the ways that companies can interact with our work and that we can help organisations meet their own environmental aims and objectives.

Tap in to our expertise

We have several projects through which we can offer businesses the benefit of our expertise to enhance and embed environmental values into their culture.

For businesses with agricultural supply chains in our area, we’re able to help identify water-related risks and work with your suppliers to address these.

Through our Holistic Water for Horticulture project, part of the Courtauld 2030 Commitment, we are already working with retailers and their fruit suppliers in Kent to increase their water resources resilience.

Kent is a prime location for fruit production, yet summer rainfall is expected to decrease by 20-30% in the area by 2040. Too much water is also an issue in terms of pollution and flooding, and we work with fruit growers to find ways to attenuate and capture farm run-off.

We can advise on the use of a range of nature-based solutions for farms and other large open spaces – including storage wetlands, floral plots, riparian tree-planting and re-naturalising rivers.

Visit the Holistic Water for Horticulture website to book a farm visit today!

In the food and drink sector? Find out more about how we can work with you on water issues by downloading our brochure.

Fundraising and corporate giving

Is your company looking for a charity partner to support for a period of time, such as a year? Then why not adopt the South East Rivers Trust?

Perhaps  your company is looking to partner with an environmental charity and donate a portion of a product’s sales as a charitable donation. We could partner with you in a joint promotion.

Could you make us your nominated charity for the year? Raising money through your regular fundraising days or activities – such as sponsored cycles, walks, runs or annual dinners – is a great way to help us carry out our work to benefit the environment.

This would greatly enhance our ability to meet operational costs and to expand our equipment, from river restoration tools to vans carrying waders and gloves for our volunteering events.

However you do it, by adopting us as your charity partner your company will be making a real difference to our work improving rivers.

Project sponsorship

Working across 12 river catchments, stretching from Reading to Dover and down to Hastings, there are a huge number of rivers to protect. Our work on rivers can only happen with funding.

We have dozens of projects, big and small, that are ready to go across a wide area, for which we would draw on our 20 years of experience helping rivers thrive.

Our rivers need protecting from many threats and can be addressed in many ways:

• Plastic and rubbish pollute our waterways, injuring, inhibiting or killing wildlife. Our experienced team wants to offer more cleanup projects for volunteers across a wider network of rivers.
• Invasive, non-native species (INNS) choke native wildlife. Through our Catchment Partnerships, we know where INNS such as Himalayan balsam, floating pennywort and giant hogweed cause major problems for rivers. It is something we have much experience in tackling, including with volunteers. However, we can only do so with funding.
• Overflows of raw sewage pollute our rivers with wetwipes and other flushed items. Our Outfall Safari work has helped monitor and address these problems. With storm overflows a nationwide problem, expanding our outfalls monitoring work to engage more communities in monitoring rivers could really make a big difference to waterways across a large area.
• Education and engagement is key to raising the profile of rivers, their importance and the pressures they face. We would love to expand our curriculum-linked schools and youth group sessions to more areas – and deliver them all for free.

Help fund our work to restore rivers

We also carry out work which works with nature to improve the environment for wildlife and people:

• Decades of industrialisation has left rivers over straightened and with many man-made barriers, such as weirs and sluices. All this inhibits the natural movements of wildlife such as fish. Our river restoration team has huge experience installing fish and eel passes and removing weirs and reshaping rivers into a more natural state. However, we are constantly finding new places along our 12 catchments where river improvements could be made and this work needs funding.
• Our rising demand for water in homes, gardens and businesses means more water is being pumped from rivers, diminishing water to a trickle at certain times of year, impacting wildlife as well as people. Our pioneering PROWATER work in Kent, for example, is addressing stressed ecosystems – work which could be replicated across many parts of the south east.
• Climate change and increasing flood risk is a concern for homes and businesses. Our pioneering Natural Flood Management work in Kent has, among other achievements, enhanced 20 hectares of priority habitat and created 3,200m3 of flood storage.

None of the many improvements we make can happen without funding. Partnering with us to sponsor a project can raise your profile.

Contact us

Help us to understand what you are looking for by contacting our team at info@southeastriverstrust.org or call 0845 092 0110.

Gain a Waterwise Checkmark for your office

Ever-growing demand for water and an increasingly extreme climate means using water wisely in our homes and businesses is critical. Without action, we’re predicted to face at least a 3.4 billion litre deficit of water per day by 2050 – and so we all need to collectively act now.

Every organisation, both within and between sectors, is totally different when it comes to how it uses water and how this impacts operations, so no one size fits all.

The South East Rivers Trust is delighted to have teamed up with Waterwise, an independent NGO, to help ensure your organisation uses this vital resource as efficiently as possible. We not only want you to use water wisely, but to help you gain recognition for doing so.

Organisations can talk to their water supplier in the first instance to see how they can help (if you’re not sure who your water retailer is you can check here).

However, if your organisation has an office (or multiple sites) then a good place to start is ensuring that your office spaces are water efficient and your staff are engaged about why it’s important to save water and how to do it.

Waterwise, a water efficiency not-for-profit organisation, runs a Checkmark for Offices award which recognises and rewards those offices who are committed to excellence in water efficiency.

This award can help organisations make those all-important steps to becoming a water-wise organisation.