BMA Speaks at Waterwise Conference
The BMA’s campaign to highlight the need to use water efficiently in the bathroom took another step forward when the Association’s Yvonne Orgill and Richard Moss joined the nine other speakers, who addressed a full audience at the recent Waterwise Conference held at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
The audience, which included the heads of water supply companies, Universities and Government agencies, looked at ways to manage the UK’s water supply through the short-term challenges posed by the current drought, as well as in the longer term. Two issues cropped up time and time again – a desire for efficiency labelling on bathroom products, which some saw as an effective answer and some saw as a complete waste of time, unless it was one element in a more comprehensive plan. Plus the need for mandatory metering for all UK homes as quickly a possible – again there was a split of opinion (50/50) as to the effectiveness of metering.
The importance of the bathroom in any water efficiency campaign was highlighted when Waterwise director Jacob Tompkins spoke of the success that the bathroom Industry had already achieved in lowering flush volumes and removing the toilet-flush from the top of the list of water users in the home.
PEOPLE & WATER EFFICIENCY
The conference was split into two sessions, the morning session concentrated on People and Water Efficiency. This session debated people’s current habits related to water usage and suggested possible changes in behaviour that need to be made, the session also considered the ways in which those changes could be achieved. Speakers included the Chair of the Consumer Council for Water, Dame Yve Buckland, who spoke about the established attitudes and behavioural patterns that we have developed in using water.
She described a long and complex process of understanding and persuasion as being the most effective way to get the consumer to think about using water more efficiently. The head of water resources at the Environment Agency, Ian Baker, highlighted just how scarce water is in some parts of the British Isles and showed the effects of drought on the wider environment. He questioned the beliefs that the simple solution is to build more reservoirs, giving the construction of the Kielder Reservoir as an example of one built to fulfill a forecast need that turned out to be far too high.
He also spoke of plans for five new reservoirs in the south of England and to extend a further three. The BMA speakers considered how water consumers need to think about changing their habits whilst using the bathroom. Yvonne Orgill told the audience about the BMA’s make-up and asserted that changing customer habits is a central issue as it would be; “commercial suicide to try and supply a market that is not there”. “Water efficiency must be wanted by people in both new and old properties”. Orgill said, “a market can only be achieved if all parties, suppliers, plumbers, retailers, merchants as well as water companies and Government come to the party”
Richard Moss described the BMA’s new WaterHog site – which has an emphasis on using water efficiently in the bathroom. Moss encouraged the attendees to consider grant schemes to speed-up the replacement of the country’s current stock of older ‘water-guzzling’ toilets some using as much as 13 litres, which is more than twice the volume needed by modern toilets. Moss stated that for the past 100 years, “we haven’t been truly concerned with how much water we’ve used in the bathroom, but now the BMA’s focus is to encourage customers to enjoy their water and use as much as they need to – but not to waste it”.
The BMA speakers were followed by Will Medd, a Research Associate for the Centre for Sustainable Water Management and the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, who gave an academic view of the public’s interaction with water along with some ideas on ways of influencing attitudes and habits toward water efficiency. The final speaker for the morning was Anne Hemming, who is the Head of Buildings Division, in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Anne spoke about the ODPM’s determination to build sustainable homes and to reduce water consumption – provision of more information concerning the volumes of water used by bathroom products was also high on the ODPM’s agenda.
The phrase ‘carrot and stick’ was used a lot – the stick seeming the most popular with mandatory metering for home owners, particularly smart meters, which give information on where water is being over-used, along with product labels to ‘force’ the bathroom industry to sell products that use even less water. There was also an increase in government pressure on the water companies to repair leaks.
EVIDENCE FOR WATER EFFICIENCY
| Water usage in homes.
Source UKWIR |
During the afternoon, the conference discussed the Evidence for Water Efficiency and the Director General of Water Services at Ofwat, Philip Fletcher opened the session with the economic case for water efficiency. He was one of the speakers to show the areas in the country where water shortages are most serious and told the audience that there are 22 water companies in the UK, supplying water to 22 million households, 6.8 million of which are in South East England.
The water companies manage the demand for 15,400 Megalitres of water per day and since February 1996, the companies have carried a duty to ‘promote the efficient use of water by all their customers’. George Archibald the Director of Business Development for Severn Trent Water put the case for what he described as the metering opportunity and was one of the keenest exponents of ‘smart’ meters.
Dr Mike Farrimond the Director of UK Water Industry Research also pushed the enforcement of metering telling the audience that there was no need for further research. Unfortunately his graph on domestic water usage (shown above) saw the toilet flush as being responsible for 33.5% of domestic water usage whereas the bath and shower together only used 22.5%, which was quite different to the previous statement by Jacob Tompkins and rather proved that, perhaps, there was a case for more research.
The next speaker was Professor David Butler, who is the Co-Director of Exeter University’s, Centre for Water Systems, School of Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics and he showed the kind of evidence gathering mechanisms available to the water industry.
The final speaker for the day was Richard Wood, the Head of the Water Supply & Regulation Division of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). He spoke of the new Water Saving Group, set up by the Minister of State for Climate Change and Environment, Elliott Morley. “The bathroom industry needs to take heed of what is currently being said about water efficiency,” says BMA Director Yvonne Orgill, “the Government is only looking to make a 10% saving in water use, which should be possible simply by advising consumers to think about ways that they use water.
A visit to the BMA’s WaterHog site www.bathroom-association.org/watersaving/default.asp will help in that respect. “There are things that bathroom designers can do too,” Orgill continued, “such as minimising the dead-leg of excessive pipe-work that carry hot water from the tank or boiler, to the hot tap or shower head.” The BMA’s web site has drawn comment from the Minister of State for Climate Change and the Environment and is now being used as a source of research and communication by the Waterwise organisation and by the media.
Bathroom Manufacturers Association – The BMA is the trade association for bathroom manufacturers. Its authority is underlined by a membership that represents 87% of the mainstream bathroom business undertaken within the UK. The BMA is involved in all aspects of the bathroom industry and the focus for 2006 will be Water Efficiency, Special Needs and Training, Education & Qualifications. In its role as the voice of the UK bathroom industry, the association has installed a water efficiency section called WaterHog on its web site.
The BMA has also prepared a series of Generic Training Guides to help people gain a clearer understanding of bathroom specification, installation and products; such as shower controls, shower enclosures, shower trays, sanitaryware, brassware and baths.
For information on all of the BMA activities visit: http://www.bathroom-association.org/
For media information please contact Richard Moss: richard.moss@bathroom-association.org.uk
The BMA’s campaign to highlight the need to use water efficiently in the bathroom took another step forward when the Association’s Yvonne Orgill and Richard Moss joined the nine other speakers, who addressed a full audience at the recent Waterwise Conference held at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
