Water can cut carbon emissions linked to your organisation – and help reduce energy bills – and this really can involve just a few simple steps.
Mark Taylor, Advanced Services Operations Manager in England for Water Plus, a Green Apple Environment Award winner and the UK’s largest water retailer, said: “Low-cost push taps and aerators can cut flow rates by 16 litres a minute. Showers can be reduced to 6 litres a minute – making a big difference for workplaces, gyms, spas – and leisure facilities. Heating less water helps the environment too, as less water needs to be transported to a site and less energy is needed to make the water hot, reducing carbon emissions linked to this.
“Tracking your water use regularly is also key to exploring opportunities around reducing carbon emissions at your organisation. If you’re an industrial company, or a manufacturer, you could include these in your daily sites checks, if the water meter is safe to access.
“Use a lot of water or have more than one meter? Data loggers, that can be placed on water meters and feed information on water use into an online portal, help you spot saving opportunities too – and highlight additional areas needing attention. This data can also be used to see what seasonal trends there may be for your site – whether the weather is hot – or during the colder months when pipes and the ground can be affected by changes in temperatures.”
Work between the Water Plus Advanced Services team and organisations in the UK – including installing data loggers on water meters in the last year – has resulted in around £4 million of additional water waste being stopped in the space of just 17 months (and an estimated billion litres of water stopped from being lost unnecessarily)*.
To request data loggers, or additional water efficiency services, contact the Water Plus team at: hello@water-plus.co.uk – and include “FM Briefing” in the email subject heading.
More tips to #BeWiseOnWater on the FM Forum website here .
Water Plus, works with organisations across England and Scotland and increased its EcoVadis Sustainability rating from Bronze to Silver in Autumn 2021, following action they started in 2021. It puts them in the top 30% of organisations globally for their approach. The water retailer is also shortlisted for four National Sustainability Awards in 2022 including Water Reduction and Team of the Year as well as its work supporting carbon reduction and biodiversity in the UK.
* From 1st January 2021 to 26th May 2022, estimated water loss totalling 1333399.46 m3 (cubic metres of water) at an approximate cost of £4 million – has been stopped due to Water Plus’s engagement with organisations (statistic based on actual water meter readings for water loss that has been stopped through repair or isolation). There are 1,000 litres in a cubic metre of water (m3). Estimate based on if water loss ran for 12 months.
