Why Water Efficiency is Essential for Businesses

Current attention has been focused more on energy efficiency than water efficiency. However, demand for water has been growing along with energy usage in recent years especially as the climate changes. Furthermore, water usage requires energy, and it contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Yet there are many other reasons aside from being eco-friendly to reduce your water usage since water is a finite resource.

Let’s take a look at why water efficiency should be a priority for your business, and some ways that you can become more efficient.

Water Supply Is Essential

Water is essential to all businesses, notably to provide drinking water, toilets and hand washing facilities for employees. Businesses may use much more water than this, however. Many manufacturing processes require water, and even if your business isn’t involved in manufacturing, water is still essential for maintenance and cleaning among other things. Being more water efficient means that you are saving money, helping the planet and your business wont be as severely affected if there are issues with your supply or price rises.

Saving Money

Taking steps to reduce water usage will eventually reduce overhead expenditures. More importantly, doing so can be done at a low cost. Sometimes, all it takes is adapting some of your processes. There are a variety of water-saving process changes that could save your business money. For example, reducing how often you rinse things will eliminate these unnecessary labour costs as well as saving water. Using cold water instead of hot water can reduce energy use and recycling grey water can also be adopted.

Smart Meter

You can get an idea of how and when you use water by installing a smart meter that tracks water usage. You can track water efficiency by determining how much water is used each time a given action is performed, whether it is rinsing holding tanks, cleaning at the end of the shifts or producing a batch of products. Once you know where the water goes, you can compare this tothe industry average for a business like yours. Then you can start looking for ways to reduce water usage.

Water Efficiency Packs

One of the things you can do is make the most of the resources offered by water suppliers, like this free water efficiency pack from Business Stream. It’ll help you to find actionable ways to improve water efficiency in your business. Business Stream’s example includes a device that you can install in toilet tanks to reduce the amount of excessive water wasted on flushes as well as a water flow aerator to reduce flow on taps. The pack also includes a great booklet on how to reduce water usage and your overall carbon footprint.

Infrastructure Changes for Water Efficiency

If your goal is to dramatically reduce water usage, you may need to look at some bigger infrastructure changes. For example, you could consider replacing water cooling with air cooling, which would make a bigger difference than you might think. Also, don’t forget to have a water audit performed to find out exactly where money is being wasted and how you can make adjustments. Demand for fresh water is expected to exceed demand much sooner than many imagine, so investing in the time to make these changes and improvements could pay dividends for your business in the future.