Government, Consumers, and the Water Sector Need to Work Together to Reduce Water Usage

Government, Consumers, and the Water Sector Need to Work Together to Reduce Water Usage

Interview with Douglas Whitfield, operations director at South East Water, and Lee Dance, organisational director at Water Resources South East

Mark Coates, International Director of Public Policy and Advocacy, Bentley Systems

South East Water supplies 2.3 million customers through a network of 9,000 miles of pipes. It delivers about 530 million litres of water every day, with each customer using 150 litres a day on average. The company has more than 250 boreholes, six rivers, and six reservoirs from which to draw water, as well as 87 water treatment works.

Between 2020 and 2025, South East Water—which serves customers in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, and Berkshire—will invest over GBP 433 million in extending and upgrading treatment works and laying new water mains.

Reducing consumption of resources is one method that society can adopt to help save the environment, according to Canadian author and journalist JB MacKinnon.

One of South East Water’s main aims is to make their water supply more resilient by reducing water usage. However, tackling this challenge cannot be done by South East Water alone. It requires industry, government, and customers to work together.

South East Water has led the United Kingdom’s water companies in installing water meters, which has proved a particularly effective way of cutting down water usage. Therefore, the company started a compulsory metering programme between 2011 and 2012 and finished between 2019 and 2020, with 90% of its households now on a water meter.

Measuring people’s water usage and charging them per unit has led to people being more strategic with their water use, resulting in an average 16% drop in usage. It also reduced water leakage, as customers’ water supply was checked when the meters were fitted and South East Water identified and fixed any leaks.

South East Water maintains that it would be advantageous for smart metering to be made more accessible and understandable to customers and companies. A study of 158 water meters installed in Port Macquarie in New South Wales showed that smart metering can save up to 46% of their total water usage through leak detection.

The water company would also like to see the governmentproposed policy of requiring all water-using products—such as taps, showers, toilets, and dishwashers—to include an efficiency label to raise awareness of their water usage. The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs consulted on this idea at the end of 2022, and it would enable customers to clearly see which
products are more efficient than others and make an informed choice on the products to buy, helping them save water and money.

The Australian government recently revealed some of the results of its water efficiency labelling and standards scheme (WELS). Last year, water usage labelling saved customers AUD 1.5 billion in utility bills. It also saved 158 gigalitres of water, equivalent to 63,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Across the wider South East region, the population has increased by around 1.2 million people between 2002 and 2020. Ensuring that new housing developments are water neutral—meaning that water usage does not increase after new homes are built—is expected to become an increasingly well-used tool to limit water usage. In fact, water-neutral design codes are being used by some councils across the south and are expected to become more commonplace in the future.

There are also a number of measures that customers can undertake to reduce water usage. For example, fixing leaky toilets can deliver significant benefits. The campaign group Waterwise has said that a single leaking toilet wastes an average of between 215 and 400 litres of water per day and that between 5% and 8% of all toilets are leaky.

Waterwise stated that the majority of leaky toilets use the newer dual-flush mechanism. To counteract this loss, customers can get leaky loo strips that identify leaks that are not clearly visible. When placed at the back of the toilet’s pan, they turn a different colour if there is a leak.

Other measures that South East Water recommend to reduce domestic consumption include harvesting rainwater to water gardens and reducing time spent in the shower, which can save 8 litres of water per minute.

While it takes all parties working together to reduce water usage, South East Water is keen for people and businesses to understand that every individual effort makes a difference.