Saving Water in the Hospitality Sector
Water use in the hospitality sector is high due to a combination of many factors including large customer numbers, long opening hours and a high turnover of staff. Implementing zero-cost or low-cost water efficiency measures can result in large savings. The difficulty is how to get premises within this sector to buy into water efficiency. In 2007 and 2008, in 2 projects funded by SEEDA, ech2o worked within the hospitality sector to understand the barriers to implementing water efficiency measures within this sector, and ultimately to succeed in reducing the water consumption of the pubs, clubs and restaurants that were involved.
Stage one of the project was carried out for Crawley Council in 2007. ech2o identified and implemented water efficiency measures in over 40 businesses within the hospitality sector saving over 5,000 m3 of water a year, an average saving of 115m3 of water per premises per year. ech2o also fitted data loggers to ten premises to start to understand patterns of water use within this sector. A comprehensive report detailing the project, considering the best way to ensure buy-in of the businesses, and analysing the savings made, is available to download on the right.