World Water Day 2026

Preserving our most precious resource: water

As the world’s driest continent, water is Australia’s most precious resource. At Heidelberg Materials, we continually look for ways to improve how we manage and reuse water across our operations, ensuring it remains available for the communities and environments around us.

This year’s World Water Day theme, Water and Gender, reminds us that water access and management affect people differently, and that inclusive, diverse perspectives are essential in building smarter, more sustainable solutions. Simply put, where water flows, equality grows.

Emily Grekos, Concrete Plant Manager at Collingwood and Croydon, is at the forefront of responsible water management. Emily started as a plant manager at just 22 and is now influencing water practices across multiple sites.

If a site has excess water, it can be discharged from site so long as it meets certain environmental criteria including pH levels. Sites like Collingwood, Port Melbourne and Croydon have CO₂ pH‑dosing pits for this purpose. There’s also a limit of around 20,000 litres daily of excess water that can be sent out.

"We predominantly use a lot of recycled water and I do know our water system here quite well. Our recycled water goes straight from the slump stands into a wedge pit, into our yard tank and the drivers are using it again almost immediately. Any extra water goes to the back of the plant and then into the holding tank at the top. So you're being loaded with it. It's going into the paddle pit, trucks are washing out with it. It works really well," Emily explains.

"What makes Collingwood a little bit different is that we have a digital water control screen that allows pumps and tank levels to be managed directly from the office, as well as manually control them. It lets me know straight away where I need to go in the yard and how to fix it."

Continuous improvement

From installing new grates and rumble strips to prevent water leaving the site, to advocating for more storage tanks to boost recycling capacity, Emily’s role helps shape smarter, more sustainable water use.

Increasing numbers of drivers are also using recycled water rather than fresh water to keep their trucks clean, and Emily believes there’s scope for even more water saving - even to keep all water on site, which is mandatory in some low-rainfall countries.

"If plants have the space for more tanks, why not implement them if it’s going to benefit their water capacity? I definitely think we probably could do with some more water tanks at other plants so you've got more water to play with."