Sustainable Water Management, Labelling and Water-metering - Strategies Towards Conservation of Water in the UK

Abstract

Water is a vital commodity for our health and wellbeing and for our life in general, for example drinking, cooking, cleaning, bathing, gardening, cooling, growing crops in agriculture, and product processing in industries. There are important social, economic and environmental impacts associated with water use [1]. Our health and environment are dependent on a sustainable use of water as well as an effective management of our polluted and waste water. Population growth and climate change are already posing an important pressure on our water resources all over the world, thereby increasing water demand and leading to more widespread water stresses, which in turn require a further increase in water abstraction and cause further water quality problems in many regions and countries. In an island country that has been blessed with regular rainfalls and even occasional floods, can UK really be short of water?! Well, the residents in the UK have experienced water hosepipe ban before in the late eighties and nineties, and almost every year there is a threat from the Environmental Agency that there is a chronic shortage of water in the reservoirs. How on earth do we manage so regularly to run short of water? Surely those running the water industry would have a strategic plan to put enough aside for a rainy day – or, rather, when the weather fails to rain! In the southeast of England, which is the most affluent and densely populated part of the UK, where majority of busy commercial companies, restaurants, hotels and industries operate; there is a high demand of water usage, but receives less rain than some parts of the Mediterranean and actually has less water per person than the largely desert countries of Syria and Sudan [2,3]. The water shortage problem is made worse due to the growing demand of housing development there, with 1.5 million more homes projected by 2026. There has been projection that permanent water rationing in the South East may have to be introduced by 2025. There is a prediction that, due to the increasing likelihood of hot, dry summers, that by 2080, rainfall in southern and eastern England may fall by half [4]. Against this background, there is an urgent need to save water and the huge amount of water leakage in the out-of-date water supply system throughout the UK should be an important consideration for the water companies. In London alone, 60% of potable water is leaked to waste and more than 3 billion litres of water in England and Wales never supplied to people’s homes. The UK, particularly in the North is known for the rainy weather and water supply in the UK was previously not a problem and households used to pay for their water usage and sewage treatment included in the local tax system against their properties. This was changed after privatisation of the water companies and water charging is now one of the rateable utility bills the UK citizen has to pay and again this is a set rate based on the rateable value (RV) of the home for the residents of England and Wales. There is an option to install water meter in your own home at a cost of the owner and the water charge would be based on the units of water consumed as indicated by the meter