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The responsibility for water efficiency needs to be shared and water companies have a statutory duty to promote water efficiency, according to CIWEM policy manager Alastair Chisholm.
This much we know: water will become an increasingly valuable commodity in the future. There are many drivers, not least population growth; a changing climate with the likelihood of increased incidence of extremes of weather (including drought); and greater protection of the ecological status of our water bodies, which requires very significant ‘sustainability reductions’ in abstraction for many water companies.
Put simply, we must all try to use less of this vital resource, as part of a twin-track approach that also involves developing new resources where it is necessary and effective to do so. Other countries in Europe have significantly less average per capita consumption so there is plenty of room for improvement.
There are indirect benefits too – less treated water used generally means less carbon-intensive treatment required.
The responsibility for water efficiency should be shared. Water companies have a statutory duty to promote water efficiency. Many measures can be implemented to deliver this duty, but central to these should be the fundamental mechanism for understanding our water use in detail: the meter.
Water companies should roll out metering as widely as possible in the near future and help their customers, through the provision of high quality information alongside their bills, to understand exactly how much they are using, potentially in comparison to their neighbours, and where and how they can reduce this amount at least cost.
This will fundamentally underpin more centrally-driven initiatives such as appliance and fitting labelling schemes. Water companies can be effective educators and facilitators, so that customers understand the real, wider environmental value of the water they use, and make it both sensible and easy for them to use less.
Responsible water management calls for changes in attitude and behaviour by all parties.
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