Using water wisely

We continue to promote the importance of saving water both at home and in the workplace, through a wide-ranging programme of activities.

During 2009/10, this work reduced water usage across our region by an estimated 3.7 million litres per day – enough to supply more than 23,000 people.

The 2009/10 programme was designed to both deliver reportable savings and to test different engagement approaches, while using innovative techniques.

This allowed us to better understand the optimum combination of activities needed to meet our water conservation targets in the most cost-effective way. The change in our programme from 2008/09 reflects the increased focus on meeting the regulatory target for water efficiency savings trialled by Ofwat.

Community engagement plays a key part in saving water, which is why we have continued to support external environmental and community events. Volunteer staff who took part in our speaker programme gave a number of talks to schools and community groups, engaging over 600 of our customers on issues including water conservation.

Helping household customers

In 2009/10 our activities included distributing over 80,000 water-saving products to local homes and businesses, including devices that can be fitted in taps, trigger nozzles for hoses and discounted water butts.

We teamed up with a range of partners to encourage water conservation. For example, we worked with the promoters of the movie Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief to organise a prize draw for customers who filled in a questionnaire on our website.

Working with GTen and Creative Environmental Network, we completed 2,402 audits of London homes as part of the Greater London Authority's 'Ten easy measures' trial, showing householders where and how they could save water and energy.

We also provided over 10,000 products to more than 2,700 recently-metered households, and worked with Archant Newspapers, who publish over 30 local papers, to offer devices that reduce toilet flush volumes to their 1.4 million readers.

Working with young people

Our 'Water Makeover' project worked with 34 schools and by 2009 had reduced their water use by an average of 32 per cent.

We have provided each school with a report detailing their water consumption before and after the project, and with a certificate benchmarking their performance against the Department of Children, Schools and Families' guidelines to display alongside their energy ratings certificate.

Working with businesses

Since 2008, we have distributed more than 9,000 'Steps to sustainable water use' packs to business customers. This includes 2,243 copies made available during 2009/10. These contain information to help businesses calculate how much water they use, identify and fix and leaks and go on to reduce water usage.

Businesses visited by our Water Regulations team have been audited to reduce their water consumption, with 2,067 audits completed – saving almost two million litres per day.

Our future plans

We will continue to investigate and develop new ways to promote the saving of water in the home and at work.

We are developing a water usage calculator for our website which will help people quantify their water use and link it to their carbon footprint. Visitors to the site will be able to generate their own action plan and find out the most suitable water-saving products.

In a partnership with WWF and Waterwise, we have launched 'Save Water Swindon', a year-long campaign aimed at challenging residents of the Swindon town to reduce their daily water use by 20 litres per day. This is being supported by providing water-saving devices and advice on conserving supplies.

We will deliver an expanded schools 'Water makeover' project, targeting more than twice the previous number of schools. We will offer more than 200 public sector customers advice and assistance to help reduce their water consumption by providing water audits and installing water-saving equipment.