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Sustainable Growth Agreements

Sustainable Growth Agreements (SGAs) are voluntary formal agreements between SEPA and an organisation (or organisations) that focus on practical action to deliver environmentally positive outcomes.

Through an SGA, SEPA can help organisations collaborate with experts, innovators and stakeholders to improve their environmental performance whilst continuing to facilitate commercial and social success. For instance, SEPA’s SGA with Scottish Water focuses on finding innovative ways of managing rainwater and waste water drainage solutions. Seeking out these changes will benefit the environment, as well as the social and economic wellbeing of Scotland’s towns and cities.

In the context of a rapidly warming climate, SGAs provide urgently needed business frameworks that facilitate more sustainable ways of working within our planet’s resources.

Most SGAs will be signed with individual businesses, but some will also be with groups of businesses, trade bodies, local authorities, Non-Governmental Organisations and others. An SGA in no way affects or prejudices our ability to act as a regulator, but is designed to open up new ways of collaborating with businesses; helping them to unlock the benefits of going further than compliance.