More handwashing but save on water
What are the costs?
You might not think you use enough water to make cutbacks necessary. However, using recent figures for the highest and lowest tariffs available, a very small business (average consumption 200m3 ) could be paying double what it needs to. Here is a comparison table drawn up in 2016/17 for water costs in a small business.
| Supplier | Thames Water | Northumbrian | Southern water | South West |
| Cost | £491.94 | £602.30 | £744.06 | £1,125.00 |
Tip. Before you do anything else, consider switching to a different water supplier. It’s the same process essentially as switching other utilities. There are comparison sites like Utilitywise or information is readily available on most suppliers’ websites. You don’t have to switch: if you find a cheaper deal, just ask your current supplier to match it.
Change in behaviour
When your staff come back into the workplace you will have a number of new health and safety protocols in place. One of these will be increased hand washing. This should be encouraged but in an office of 30 people, each washing their hands an additional six times a day for 20 seconds, this could be an extra 14.4m3 of water - or £19 to £30 a year. This isn’t significant, but the frequency of handwashing could lead to increases in the chances of taps being left on etc.
Did you know? A 5mm stream of water wastes 528m3 of water per year. That’s assuming it’s running all 8,760 hours. But one tap left on for an hour will waste 0.06m3 of water, which will soon add up. For example, a business with 75 staff has four washrooms, each with three sinks, and a kitchen with one sink - a total of 26 taps. If just two of those are left running for an hour a day it will waste 31m3 . That’s £42 to £65 based on low and high tariffs above respectively.
Other easy targets
Fix dripping taps. A dripping tap could waste 5.5m3 of water a year. Using the above example, if four of the taps are dripping that’s another 22m3 a year - £30 to £46.
Dishwashing. If you have a dishwasher in the kitchen, make sure it only goes on with a full load. The machine will use about 0.013m3 (13 litres), so if it goes on four times a week with a half load that’ll equate to 2.7m3 . Cut it to twice a week with a full load and it will save 1.35m3 .
Read it. Taking regular meter readings and providing the information to your supplier will ensure it bills you for what you’ve used, instead of an estimate. This is especially important if you’ve been closed for months and will have fewer staff on site. Better monitoring will also mean you can identify any spikes in usage, which will usually be down to a leak.
| What you’ll save | |||||||||||||||
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The steps above could realistically cut water usage by 20% or more in an average office. Here are the savings based on each full-time employee in an office of 30 people using 12m3 of water a year (50l/day). This more than offsets the costs of additional handwashing. This is based on a water cost of £1.50/m3 .
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