Thames: 2020 must be the year of the water label

Water resource planning must be done differently to maintain water security for the future and with far wider input than the water sector alone.

That is the message from the water efficiency manager at Thames Water, who told Utility Week the country needs a government-led initiative to make a meaningful impact.

Andrew Tucker said: “It’s simple what needs to be done, mandatory water labels on all products.

“The government is supportive, it just now needs to happen and must be written into legislation that to sell a product in the UK it has to have the label. Per capita consumption (PCC) targets will not be reached without that.”

He said the label will make water saving as visible to customers as saving energy. “We need devices to be more efficient and for people using the devices to be more efficient. A water label is genuinely the only thing that will make every single device more efficient. It’s the only thing that’ll put this on people’s agenda when buying or making things. It worked for energy and it has to happen for water.”

Tucker said the drive needs to come from beyond the water sector alone to ensure the message is understood by all water users, both household and businesses. He hopes the current drive for lowering PCC will push the government to introduce water labelling.

Like other water companies Thames offers home visits with bespoke water saving advice to households with water meters. It visits 70,000 homes per year to teach customers how and why they should be water efficient.

“When our teams talk to householders about efficiency they understand, but that message needs to be brought to every household in the country and repeated several times to get the message across – it can’t be down to water companies alone.

“The big changes do require a government intervention. You can’t rely on an economic regulated water sector that’s already doing everything to save it, we need it to come from every industry and all business and it needs to be in the public eye. The sector is the only one talking about it.”

Thames’ AMP7 programme is the largest water efficiency project seen in the UK, according to Tucker, who explained that although the company is behind the rest of the country with its metering roll-out, the data collected has given “astonishing” understanding of leakage and water usage.

“It really is a game changer. We are able to better understand our leakage number and make sure it comes down. The data is rewriting what we know about water use.”

Data showed water being lost in households because of leaky loos or inefficient products, and water usage overnight is far higher than previously thought.

“Products on the market can be poor quality design. Between five and eight per cent of all homes constantly lose water from leaky loos. The data shows 16 per cent of London homes never stop leaking. These have been recorded as company leaks before and we do have a lot to do and are fixing 1,400 leaks a week, but the growing problem is on the customer side.”

Armed with such information, Tucker said 55- 60 per cent of customers fix the leaks immediately.

As well as water efficiency, mandatory labelling would improve in-home leakage rates.

“2020 needs to be the year of the label. Everyone is saying the same thing – without it we will continue facing water stretch challenges and they will keep getting worse,” Tucker predicted.

Growing population and increasingly drier weather stretches resources, calling for more robust methods.

“We need far bigger reservoirs. We can’t keep adding 100,000 people to the equation each year and expect the old resources to manage.

“We are doing so much on metering and water efficiency to push demand down but ultimately you can’t just keep adding more people into a more challenging climate and rainfall environment and not expect a bad result. It’s all about resilience.”

He explained the need to maintain lower customer bills during the five-year regulatory period was restrictive when considering resilience for the next one hundred years.

Thames was allocated £203 million by Ofwat for the coming five-year period, a lower amount than the company hoped for. “We want it to be higher. We are desperate to fix leaks and our customers want us to fix leaks as well as being desperate to save water because of the sheer growth in population.

“Longer term there is no water for those people, so we need water resources longer term but for now reducing demand and saving water along the way is an essential approach,” Tucker added.