Are you managing your water?

April 13, 2008 – 8:26 am

On holiday in France I noticed a neighbour watering his immaculate lawn with a very impressive sprinkler system and distinct lack of rainwater capture systems, not even a water butt. My French isn’t good enough, and my attitude wasn’t tough enough to ask him if he has considered the energy he is wasting due to:

• water supply and conveyance
• water treatment
• water distribution.

By the same token, how many construction sites and even businesses pay any, let alone proper attention to their water cycle? Would this be a different story if they had to pay for the energy used in the volume they consume?

In the absence of financial incentives, and assuming morality by-passes are in place for most business leaders (harsh but probably fair?), this is a difficult problem to tackle. The construction industry is probably better placed than most to understand and deal with this issue due to the increasing pressure to design and incorporate water efficiency in new buildings.

Still, the age old issue of abundant supply leading to waste and inefficiency, appears to hold true. My pet hate is to see an open hose left running on a building site, simply resolvable with a small investment in nozzles.

In the office the water you use has the additional energy burden of requiring waste water treatment once you have had your wicked way with it.

Measurement of water usage has to be the start point. Offices should have water meters and where appropriate sub meters fitted for significant sized (no. of people, not their girth) tenants, and surely it is not beyond us to install meters on sites?

So meters are in, what next? Reducing your consumption should not be rocket science when you consider the typical office usage breakdown:

• 43% - toilet flushing
• 27% - washing
• 20% - urinal flushing
• 9% - canteen
• 1% - cleaning.

There is a vast amount of guidance on how to reduce your usage, one of the simplest is Envirowise. The typical usage above shows that in offices the Ladies and the Gents are the target areas and the systems are out there - simple stuff like cistern bricks to reduce flush volumes, and slightly more impressive things like biological urinal cleaning systems.On site, toilets and welfare facilities are still likely to be a key target area, however the potential for uncontrolled water use and leakage is very high, particularly on small and medium sized projects.

Should you be interested in my thoughts, the path I would suggest is in the office and on site to:

• measure water usage
• reduce water usage
• brag about your reductions (encourage others to do the same and get the deserved benefit of stakeholder approval)
• benchmark your consumption per head etc. against comparable businesses
• keep on improving
• feel the benefit when water rates inevitably rise (depending on your part of the world)
• gain the benefit from this step on the sustainability and efficiency ladder - it enables and encourages further performance improvements by contributing to a positive / ‘tightly run ship’ environment.