Reducing Water Wastage in the UK

Water use in the hospitality sector is high due to many factors including a combination of large customer numbers, long opening hours, a high turnover of staff, and, sometimes, a lack of leadership from head office. And yet, implementing low-cost or zero-cost water efficient measures is a quick and easy solution that can result in large savings, financial as well as environmental. The difficulty is how to get premises within this sector to buy into water efficiency.

ech2o, in a SEEDA funded project, worked with Local Authority partners and two Water Supply companies to train selected staff to carry out water audits in hospitality premises within their areas to implement simple water efficiency measures such as retrofitting save-a flush bags into WC cisterns, adjusting flow rates from taps, identifying and fixing leaks and installing urinal controls.

ech2o also targeted chains at head office level to introduce an ethos of water efficiency into these businesses, as work in a previous project had shown that many premises could not action improvements at site level without agreement from head office; local water saving projects could be more successful if the main chains were as committed to water efficiency as they are to energy efficiency.

Total water savings achieved under the project by April 2008 are calculated to be 2812m3 of water across 51 premises, an average saving of 55m3 of water per premises per year. 2812m3 of water saved is 3374 kWh of electrical energy saved, resulting in 1687 kgCO2 not emitted.

A second strand of the funding was to analyse data from ten premises (a cross-section of pubs, nightclubs and restaurants) which had been logged for a year. The data collected from these sites, showing the effectiveness of the low and zero cost measures installed are also detailed in the report.

Read the comprehensive report detailing the project and analysing the savings made by downloading it or email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it . The report will be of interest to everyone involved in the water sector and those tasked to achieve water efficiency within existing buildings.

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