Five ways to save water

Why save water?

Water is a precious resource. There's a financial and environmental cost to every drop we use. From damaging fragile ecosystems with excessive extraction, to the CO2 released as part of its treatment and transportation - it's important to understand the impact we're having.

How you can start saving

1. Understand your water consumption

Understanding your water usage is the first step to start saving. Knowing how much water you use, and where in your business, can help you to identify areas of potential savings, quickly address leaks, and help to save this precious resource. By checking your recent water bills, you’ll get an idea of how much water you currently use over a certain period of time. By monitoring your bills closely on an ongoing basis, you can identify changes to patterns in your water consumption. Did you know you can review your consumption and costs by managing your account online with My Business Stream?

2. Check for leaks

It’s important to check for leaks regularly. Leaks waste money by wasting water, but they can also cause serious damage to your premises over time. General wear and tear or extreme weather can affect your pipes and cause leaks when you least expect it. Find out more on how to check for leaks.

3. Improve your water efficiency

You can tackle water waste issues and improve water efficiency across your business by implementing water saving measures in a range of areas from the kitchen to the toilets. We’ve listed some ways to help your business be more water efficient below.

• Use a water-saving device in your toilet cistern(s). Depending on the size of your cistern(s), you could save between one and three litres of water each time you flush the toilet.
• Think about fitting a water butt to collect rainwater from your roof. Water butts, which are large containers used for collecting liquid, usually store about 200 litres of water. As well as being better for watering your plants, using rainwater in the garden reduces the amount of treated water you use.
• Install motion sensors on sink taps. This will help avoid taps being left to run.

4. Rethink your landscaping 

In the name of aesthetics, some businesses invest in water-intensive landscaping. If your gardens are using a lot of water, look into how you can change your premises’ green spaces. You could do this by choosing as many existing trees and shrubs as possible. Established plants usually require less water and maintenance. Try to choose plants native to the UK too. Once established, they’ll require very little to no water beyond normal rainfall.

5. Engage and inform your colleagues

Your frontline team are a valuable resource of information on how things really run within your business. Be sure to educate them on what you’re trying to achieve by promoting water efficiency and share some of the useful insights you’ve already discovered about your business’ consumption. You might find that your colleagues can provide vital insights which could result in more water efficiency measures.

How we can help

We’re here to help make the steps to being more water efficient a bit easier. You can start your water efficiency journey by downloading our exclusive Water Efficiency Toolkit. Our new water efficiency assets will help you put a plan into place across your business so you can start saving water instantly.