All set for a wet summer?

The Energy Saving Trust’s new report At Home With Water shares the findings of the largest ever survey of how people in Britain use water at home. Some reflections from SE2:

Expect showers

Showers have become the biggest single consumer of water at home.  To me, they’re a perfect example of rebound or comfort taking. We make a shift from an inefficient behaviour (having a bath) to an efficient one (having a shower), and think we’re doing pretty well. But then we hang around in the shower singing away for longer than we should, or shower twice a day, or buy a waterfall style drenching unit and, well, the savings trickle down the drain.

What this suggests is that changing the “technology” is not enough. We have to think about how technology and behaviour interact. And we have to think about how we market “efficiency” as a route to environmental outcomes. Efficiency is not an in-built feature of a product – it’s a function of product x how the product is used. The noble consumer who’s bought an efficient product and thinks that the environmental job is therefore done is going to have to be persuaded that there’s a bit more to it.

What about Other?

“Other (cold taps)” accounts for 22% of water use in the survey. This is broken down as brushing teeth, cooking, cleaning and drinking; probably some washing of hands and maybe clothes in there too, plus water for playing games,  cleaning paintbrushes, watering plants, feeding the dog, soothing burns, washing away spiders if they scare you, and so forth. Each of these is probably tiny – depending on the number of plants you have, the size of your dog and how careful a chef you are. But cumulatively, they add up. They’re perhaps the equivalent of leaks in pipes – drip, drip, drip and before you know it, you’ve hit 22%.

Someone wise said to me the other day: people don’t always recognise that they are over-using water because people are always using water for a purpose (unlike, say, electricity which we know we’re wasting when we leave things on standby). Water is a genuine utility – we are always using it to achieve an end, so potentially it’s a much bigger ask to get us to use it in more efficient ways.

What you can measure, you can manage (except when you can’t)

I was surprised at the estimate that households with water meters only use 3% less water than unmetered households. As the report points out, the promotion of meters usually suggests a greater return, maybe 10%.

Perhaps the issue here is visibility – just as it has been with energy meters. Water meters are often under the kitchen sink, tucked at the back of a cupboard, or even under the pavement in the street outside. So, whilst your use is metered and your bill is accurate to your consumption, you actually don’t have any visibility of your consumption as you go along. There’s no feedback on how much water you’re using in a day, a week or even a month. Without those feedback points, how is the householder to know how much water they’re using, which activities are most thirsty and where the specific opportunities are for saving?

At Home With Water is a very interesting read – you can download the PDF at http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/About-us/The-Foundation/Our-pioneering-research. There’s also a webinar on Friday 12 July – details on the same web page.

Tell us what you think via Twitter - @se2limited – or drop me a line at liz.warren@se-2.co.uk.

Thanks to vesma.com for the "having a bath" link :-)