CITIZEN SCIENCE REQUEST – how much water do you use away from home?

Waterwise is an independent, not-for-profit UK NGO focused on reducing water consumption in the UK. 

It supports – and challenges – governments, water companies, industry, farmers and customers to be innovative and ambitious on water efficiency.

Waterwise is the leading authority on water efficiency in the UK.  Its work includes research, events, technological and policy innovation, training and media.

Waterwise uses hard facts to support policy thinking.  Water scarcity and the impact of the climate crisis are in the news all over the world, and the UK is facing its own stark reality of risks to security of supplies – the ‘jaws of death’ referred to in a recent speech by Sir James Bevan, CEO of the Environment Agency.

In order to plan and invest for secure supplies it’s important to understand how water is used, and the scope to use it more efficiently.  One element of everyday use that needs more data is how much water each of us uses, in total, every day.  Conventionally, this is based just on what we use in our home (on average, a little over 140 litres per person per day, and rising), but when we’re at work, leisure etc we are using water in a different location, which simply gets recorded as part of generic ‘non-household use’ in a different part of the water balance used by water companies.

Waterwise is running a citizen science exercise to try and establish what this ‘out of home’ use is.  The more folk that complete it, the more representative the results are likely to be.  All you need to do is go to  https://www.waterwise.org.uk/your-water-diary-2019/  and keep a simple diary for a two week period, and then send it to Lydia Makin at Waterwise.

The deadline is Friday 4th October 2019.

 

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