We can’t live without water. Water is one of the most important substances on earth and without it, most things would perish. We drink it, we clean ourselves, our clothes, our homes with it, and plants grow with it, it is pivotal to life on earth. Therefore, we must be cautious about our water consumption, especially as we are also now utilising water to create power too.
We can’t utilise all water, for instance, we cannot drink sea water without removing all the salt from it, and we can’t drink/clean ourselves with river water without needing to clean the water itself first.
Figure 1: Drinking water. [4]
The Water Industry
The water industry is massive. The 1989 Water Act privatised water for £7.6bn with the Conservative government of the time wiping out the industry’s debts before the sale. [1] Since then the industry has loaded debt back up to £48bn with the debt not used to fix leaky pipes but to line shareholder pockets. Add in shareholder dividends and the debt reaches £57bn. We all consume water in different ways every day in our lives but paying off that debt has to come from somewhere.
Water Consumption
Across England alone, some 3 billion litres of water A DAY is lost to leaks – [2] the equivalent of 1,180 Olympic swimming pools. [3] And here we are today being urged to curb water use, such as hose pipe bans, using washing up water to water plants, only using the dishwasher when it is full, and quick showers instead of baths.
The difficulty lies in the fact that, if the government were to fix pipes to reduce the amount of water lost to leaks, we wouldn’t need to curb our water consumption, as the two losses don’t even compare. The amount of water we waste through over-consuming water, wouldn’t even come close to the amount of water lost due to leaks.
We all need to think about what we use water for and the importance of water. If we utilised water in better ways, for instance creating eco-friendly power by capturing energy from the ocean’s waves instead of using copious amounts of water to cool down power stations from overheating to create power, we could massively reduce our water consumption.
Improving Our Own Water Usage and Consumption?
- We could all invest in things like water butts, which collect rainwater that we could then use to water our gardens etc. in periods of drought.
- We could only use our washing machines/dishwashers when they are full.
- Don’t leave the tap running whilst brushing our teeth.
- Only use one bucket of water to wash our car and one bucket to rinse it, not the hose pipe.
- Use water from a paddling pool to water plants after.
- Don’t have excessively long showers.
- Don’t wash up with the tap running, run a bowl of water.
About Pager Power
Pager Power undertakes technical assessments for developers of renewable energy projects and tall buildings. For more information about what we do, please get in touch.
References
[1] England’s water system: the last of the privatised monopolies – for now | Utilities | The Guardian
[2] Tracking down three billion litres of lost water – BBC News
[3] People in England urged to curb water use amid driest conditions since 1976 | Drought | The Guardian
[4] Skitterphoto (Oct 2017) on Pexels.com. Last accessed on 8th December 2022. Available at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/macro-photography-of-a-stainless-steel-faucet-615326/
