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Testing for coronavirus in wastewater – a game changer in the fight against Covid-19? - Click here to view this entry

Testing for coronavirus in wastewater – a game changer in the fight against Covid-19?

Cath Hassell, ech2o consultants ltd
March 2020
We all know that Covid-19 is a respiratory illness and you catch it by inhaling infected droplets, but can the virus that causes it (SARS-CoV-2) be found in wastewater and if so is that a good or a bad thing?
Westcountry Women Working With Water (and Frankie the Flamingo!) - Click here to view this entry

Westcountry Women Working With Water (and Frankie the Flamingo!)

Dr Sarah Ward, University of the West of England
October 2019
Imaginative and immersive experiences as a child can last a life time and at a time where the planet faces a range of challenges, we need to engage children and young people in positive, action-orientated ways.



From June 2018-July 2019, a team of engineers and engagement professionals embarked on a project for children focusing on the urban water cycle, flooding and sustainable drai....
Conserving water = conserving energy: how can I reduce my water usage? - Click here to view this entry

Conserving water = conserving energy: how can I reduce my water usage?

Dawn Murphy, Action Renewables
August 2019
An average person in the UK uses 140 litres of water per day. That may seem like a lot, but when you consider our everyday uses such as showering, bathing, toilet flushing, washing dishes, washing cars, watering gardens and of course drinking, it all adds up. But out of those 140 litres you use, how many of those do you drink? Doesn't it seem like a waste to treat water to drinking quality j....
Green Energy from Black Water: The Hamburg Water Cycle - Click here to view this entry

Green Energy from Black Water: The Hamburg Water Cycle

Eleanor Eaton, WATEF network
July 2019
This year’s study trip takes us to Hamburg, to see how HAMBURG WASSER are building innovative wastewater technology: the HAMBURG WATER Cycle into a new residential district; the Jenfelder Au.
How can labelling help us reduce our water use? - Click here to view this entry

How can labelling help us reduce our water use?

Andrew Tucker - Water Efficiency Manager at Thames Water
July 2019
Across the nation, water fittings and appliances are being bought and installed every day. The daily grind of going to work, to school and just getting things done at home, means that 66 million people are using these fittings and appliances, morning and night. This adds up to an incredible amount of water – well over 9 billion litres used in just our homes each day.

So how can we reduc....
Investigating the non-technical challenges to installing micro-hydro in water networks - Click here to view this entry

Investigating the non-technical challenges to installing micro-hydro in water networks

Dawn Murphy, Action Renewables
June 2019
Dawn Murphy explores the aims and objectives of our partner project - REDAWN. The REDAWN project (Reducing Energy Dependency in Atlantic Area Water Networks) aims to foster the adoption of hydropower energy recovery technology in built water networks in the Atlantic Area (AA). The project involves 15 partners from 5 countries. The WATEF Network contributes to two work packages in this project. <....
Halving the amount of water we all use every day - why not?! - Click here to view this entry

Halving the amount of water we all use every day - why not?!

Nicci Russell, Waterwise Managing Director
May 2019
Readers will know that in the UK we each use, on average, 140 litres of water per day. At the 2019 Waterwise annual conference a few weeks ago, we focused on getting to 100 litres or less. Sir James Bevan put a lot of welcome oxygen on the subject with his now infamous ‘Jaws of Death’ speech, in which he said ‘We need water wastage to be as socially unacceptable as blowing smoke in the face ....
Equitable water access: leaving no one behind, wherever. - Click here to view this entry

Equitable water access: leaving no one behind, wherever.

Kemi Adeyeye, WATEF network
April 2019
This year’s World Water Day was on the 22nd of March, a day when we all consider the importance of water to life, health, livelihood and wellbeing. It is also a time to pause and think about the 2.1 billion people who still lack access to safely managed drinking water services and the 4.5 billion people who lack safely managed sanitation services.
Water efficient hot and cold water system design – the problems and possible solutions - Click here to view this entry

Water efficient hot and cold water system design – the problems and possible solutions

John Griggs
March 2019
For many years, a silo mentality has existed in the regulatory world that has permeated through to designers, architects and tradesmen. Whatever topic or item they are dealing with has been considered in isolation. This has created conflicting requirements, guidance and practices that have tended to hinder progress to newer and more ecological ways of doing things.
Micropollutants and Wastewater Treatment - Click here to view this entry

Micropollutants and Wastewater Treatment

Dr Jannis Wenk, University of Bath
February 2019
Of all the weird and wonderful things that find their way into our sewers, micropollutants are some of the most difficult to remove. Dr Jannis Wenk (University of Bath) explores what effects these pollutants have on our environment, and what technologies can be employed to remove these before they reach the food chain.
Bath Abbey Footprint Project Hot Spring Water Heat Recovery - Click here to view this entry

Bath Abbey Footprint Project Hot Spring Water Heat Recovery

Neil Francis, Burro Happold
December 2018
Over one million litres of natural hot spring water at up to 45°C rises in the centre of Bath every day flowing through the Roman Baths and the Great Drain to discharge into the River Avon. Bath Abbey plans to recovery energy from the water in the Great Drain for heating of the Abbey as part of the much broader £20m Footprint Project currently underway on site...
Can Sustainable Building Certification Go Further For Water Efficiency?  - Click here to view this entry

Can Sustainable Building Certification Go Further For Water Efficiency?

John Gallagher, Trinity College Dublin
December 2018
What value does certification place on water?

We discuss the challenge of assessing the true impact of sustainability certification on water efficiency in buildings. And in 2018, do these fixed scoring systems go far enough for water?
Time for a complete data-revolution in Urban Hydraulics - Click here to view this entry

Time for a complete data-revolution in Urban Hydraulics

Manuel Herrera
November 2018
Our October blog focussed on the influence of smart metering on the efficiency, operation and management of current and future urban water systems. This result seems to me to be quite inspirational and made me think about a number of questions beyond all the current and future smart-technology available...
Towards Smart Water Systems - Click here to view this entry

Towards Smart Water Systems

Kourosh Behzadian
October 2018
Pressure on limited water resources and frequent combined sewer overflow (CSO) spills due to external scenarios such as climate change and ever-increasing population growth, means that our water systems and infrastructure are under increasing pressure. This has led stakeholders to explore more efficient strategies for management of water resources and demand. Thanks to the technological advancemen....
WatefCon18: Doing the reverse Brexit into Europe and beyond - Click here to view this entry

WatefCon18: Doing the reverse Brexit into Europe and beyond

Kemi Adeyeye
September 2018
Okay. Apologies for the ‘B’ word. I guess most people have had enough already by now. However, it is within this context that the Water Efficiency network takes to Europe, Portugal in fact, as we continue to maintain ‘strong and stable’ links with our European neighbours and partners.
Freeze/ thaw as a resilience issue linked to customer participation and water efficiency - Click here to view this entry

Freeze/ thaw as a resilience issue linked to customer participation and water efficiency

Aaron Burton, Director of Policy and Innovation at Waterwise
July 2018
In March 2018 we effectively faced a major drought occurring within the space of several days – we need to have much greater engagement with customers in order to deal with all resilience issues and water efficiency is a key aspect of this.
Water Efficiency: Unlocking the Value of Smart Meter Data - Click here to view this entry

Water Efficiency: Unlocking the Value of Smart Meter Data

Despina Manouseli
June 2018
Five years ago, I was a (very stressed) research student searching for data: domestic water consumption data from an adequate number of homes in the UK that would help me answer the question – Do water efficiency programmes in the UK lead to a decrease in domestic water demand and if so, how much water is being saved?
Getting into the Spirit of Water Efficiency - Click here to view this entry

Getting into the Spirit of Water Efficiency

Ben Orchard and Richard Carter, Adnams Brewery
June 2018
Adnams have introduced new technology into our brewery and distillery to reduce both water and energy consumption. This is a huge chapter in our sustainability story – our distillery water consumption should reduce by about half and our energy (and carbon emissions) will reduce by around 15%.
How to help solve the water scarcity trilemma - Click here to view this entry

How to help solve the water scarcity trilemma

Martin Shouler
May 2018
You’ve probably heard about the energy trilemma. Well, the water sector is facing its own trilemma: it needs to allocate increasingly scarce resources of water among citizens, the economy and the environment if it’s to avoid a damaging conflict between them.
The long road of building rehabilitation and....water efficiency - Click here to view this entry

The long road of building rehabilitation and....water efficiency

Inês Meireles
April 2018
When I was a child, I used to observe all the antiques my parents had around the house. I particularly liked some objects that were, in fact, the bathroom of my great grandparents (Fig. 1) and never thought that the nowadays bathroom, that I always took for granted, could have been so different. Around the same time, I remember to find very awkward that my grandmother used to have a small “potty....
Cape Town’s Water Crisis – What lessons can be learned? - Click here to view this entry

Cape Town’s Water Crisis – What lessons can be learned?

Cath Hassell www.ech2o.co.uk
July 2018
Cape Town’s water crisis is now big news globally, though it has been exercising the minds of the four million city dwellers since this time last year. As I write this blog 'Day Zero' is now July 9th (a grace period of almost three months since the beginning of February when it was estimated to be mid-April) and still too close for comfort. Day Zero is when the water level in the six d....
Technology, Behaviour and Culture for Managing Water Demand - Click here to view this entry

Technology, Behaviour and Culture for Managing Water Demand

Sarah Bell, University College London
January 2018
Demand for water and the capacity of infrastructure systems to meet it varies widely in cities across the world. In cities with growing populations and finite water resources, reducing per capita consumption of water is an obvious strategy for making existing water resources serve more people. As readers of this blog well know, managing demand for water is far from simple. Reliable access to clean....
OFWAT 2020 Price Review signals greater transparency  - Click here to view this entry

OFWAT 2020 Price Review signals greater transparency

Allan Lambert, Open Access Leakssuite
January 2018
It seems that everyone in the UK has an opinion on leakage from public water supply systems – usually that it is ‘wasteful’, ‘too high’; or ‘more should be done’ – but how does perception compare with reality? Is this ‘group-think’ or is it based on logical analysis of factual data, using international ‘fit for purpose’ performance comparisons? Is there any widely accepted ....
Leaky Loos - Click here to view this entry

Leaky Loos

Alice Hill, Thames Water
November 2017
A leaky loo doesn’t sound very nice. Is it foul water leaking? Where is leaking, onto the floor? Luckily that’s not what we are talking about but ‘leaky loos’ are easily misunderstood. So just to clarify, in this blog we are talking about toilets leaking clean water from the cistern into the bowl, often just a barely visible trickle down the toilet pan causing some ripples in the bowl wate....
Sustainable Flood Resilience in Refugee Camps; Combining sustainable drainage (SuDS) with WASH - Click here to view this entry

Sustainable Flood Resilience in Refugee Camps; Combining sustainable drainage (SuDS) with WASH

Sue Charlesworth
November 2017
This project is sponsored by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) and the blog below was written by the project’s Masters by Research student, Mitchell McTough and landscape architect Simon Watkins on visits to various refugee camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). When camps are set up, bearing in mind these are associated with situations of crisis and offer displaced people somewhere s....
The next generation of water protectors - Click here to view this entry

The next generation of water protectors

Amber Robinson
October 2017
Clean water, access to sanitation, and an understanding of good hygiene practices are essential for the survival and development of children. So who better to empower to tackle local and global water issues than young people themselves?
As the leaders of tomorrow, young people are going to be key to achieving the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 6 – access to....
Water quality issues in Germany and the UK – similarities and differences - Click here to view this entry

Water quality issues in Germany and the UK – similarities and differences

Siegfried Gendries
August 2017
n the UK it is an offence to supply water unfit for human consumption under Section 70 of the Water Industry Act (1991) and similar legislation applies in Germany. Water supplied to buildings must be pure and suitable for drinking purposes without any health risks, containing neither pathogens nor other substances in health-damaging concentrations. To meet this legislation water suppliers deliver ....
Do economics and water mix?  - Click here to view this entry

Do economics and water mix?

Colin Green
July 2017
Over many years of giving introductions to economics to water specialists, I learnt that the best way of discouraging them from zoning out was to start by asking how many of them disagreed with at least one of the following statements:

• Astrology offers greater intellectual rigour than economics.
• Accountancy provides greater intellectual excitement than economics.
• ....
Flushing the toilet. How it all started and where are we now?   - Click here to view this entry

Flushing the toilet. How it all started and where are we now?

Peter Curtain, Allerton Communications
July 2017

It’s something we all use but seldom discuss or even think about. Yet the toilet is the subject of an ongoing revolution aimed at boosting performance, conservation and even luxury. Peter Curtain* reports.

Visiting a farm as a boy in Australia, I had a memorable moment walking back to the house in pitch darkness after nature called. I got lost in a crop field then saw the veranda lig....
The Quest for the Perfect Showerhead - Click here to view this entry

The Quest for the Perfect Showerhead

Dr Kemi Adeyeye, University of Bath
May 2017
A while ago, I asked some folks at a social event, as one does during a conversation lull, what they thought about their shower (The question was deliberately vague). The main responses were: “I like to shower”, “nobody takes baths anymore” and, “I can’t do without a shower in the morning”. Not one person said that: “I spend 5 minutes or less in the shower you know”, “I am in t....
Water Issues - Past and Present - In Valencia - Click here to view this entry

Water Issues - Past and Present - In Valencia

Grace Harland, Waterwise
May 2017
Valencia, a city located on the south-east coast of Spain, is the country’s third largest city after Madrid and Barcelona with 800,000 inhabitants in the administrative centre. It is at the forefront of water saving initiatives with its smart metering programme and intelligent irrigation systems for the huertas (farmland) surrounding the city; as such it was this year’s WATEF study trip destin....
Barcelona Springs to Life - El Agua de la Vida - Click here to view this entry

Barcelona Springs to Life - El Agua de la Vida

Dr Mary Gearey University of Brighton
April 2017
In the famous Catalan fairy story ‚‘The Water of Life‘, also known by its original name ‘El agua de la vida’, only the deliverance of the water of life, sourced from a magic spring in the hills, can save a family from being turned to stone by an evil giant. It is the daughter of the family who outsmarts the ogre and restores life with the water. The life of her own family, of her petrifi....
Whats in a Word? - Click here to view this entry

Whats in a Word?

Cath Hassell www.ech2o.co.uk
March 2018
What do you see if you look at water that has just entered a drain or sewer? Well, if it’s just come from a toilet that’s been flushed (known as foul water) it will look like water (i.e. clear). It might have loo roll in it (possibly variable colours though mostly white) or poo, and if the user hasn't heard of the three P's rule (i.e. only poo paper or pee) then maybe a wet-wipe, a t....
Florence: A City Immersed in Fame, Water and Gardens - Click here to view this entry

Florence: A City Immersed in Fame, Water and Gardens

Dr Eleni Tracada, University of Derby
February 2017
It has been shown that that citizens are motivated to participate in the improvement and maintenance of civic landscapes when these latter contribute to the quality of life of the people living in proximity. There is also convincing evidence that cultural ecosystem services can be aesthetic and spiritual and that people respond to landscape beauty and scale with admiration and respect. Landscape ....
How Do We Value Water? - Click here to view this entry

How Do We Value Water?

Sharon Russell-Verma, Waterwise
January 2017
How do we value water?

We cannot live without water, but because it is so much part of our everyday exist-ence it has become invisible to us. We need to understand and acknowledge its im-portance to modern lifestyles and to start to value the role it plays in all our lives.

Natural capital
But how do we value a resource that is ‘invisible’? The fact that it is so makes it eve....
The Love Story of Water - Click here to view this entry

The Love Story of Water

Daniela Flor, UCL
January 2017
During our whole life, we deal with complex systems and we make decisions based on the information we have. One of the most complex systems is love where we have to deal with multiple variables. Our love for someone changes over time and it could be affected by the love we receive, our priorities and numerous variables. Water efficiency is also a complex system and is affected by the perceived ben....
From Toilet to Tap - Click here to view this entry

From Toilet to Tap

Chad Staddon, UWE Bristol
November 2016
From Toilet to Tap?: wastewater reuse is an idea whose time has surely come
Chad Staddon, Professor of Resource Economics and Policy, University of the West of England
A standard opening gambit at climate change, water and sustainability conferences is to note that increasing climatic volatility (warmer average temperatures and increased frequency of exceptional precipitation events) and pop....
Water Words - Click here to view this entry

Water Words

Sarah Bell, University College London
September 2016
This is the blog of the Water Efficiency Network. We write about water efficiency. Why ‘efficiency’? Why not water conservation, water saving or water use? Perhaps these are just synonyms, and we all know what we are talking about. But the words we choose to talk about the world matter. Words shape our thinking. The language of efficiency allows us to talk about some things, and not others.
Is Saving Water Really Just Common Sense? - Click here to view this entry

Is Saving Water Really Just Common Sense?

Ana-Maria Millan, Consumer Council for Water
November 2016
Is saving water really just ‘common sense’?

Many of us take action routinely to save water. But are we really thinking about what we’re doing or, as new research by CCWater suggests, are we just relying on our ‘common sense’?

Our research, ‘Attitudes to Tap Water and Using Water Wisely’, reveals that two-thirds (66%) of adults in England and Wales have made a conscious ....
On the banks of the River Nile – water use and water efficiency in Egyptian villages - Click here to view this entry

On the banks of the River Nile – water use and water efficiency in Egyptian villages

Suzanne Armsden, Brighton University
September 2016
Until a few years ago I lived in Upper Egypt within a small village community on the Eastern banks of the Nile opposite the granite ridge which forms the Valley of the Kings. The River Nile – which courses through over 10 countries – has always been the lifeblood of the average Egyptian. The waters of this great river flow from south to north – emptying finally into the Mediterranean Sea. ....
Does Water Unite or Divide Us? - Click here to view this entry

Does Water Unite or Divide Us?

Tom Veitch, Global Action Plan
September 2016
Water may just be H2O, but that doesn’t mean that we all see it the same way. There are clear differences between groups of people in how they view and use water. This was well demonstrated recently by Faith in Water, a Thames Water, London Sustainability Exchange (LSx) and UCL study, which explored attitudes, beliefs and practices around water use with seven different faith communities in Londo....
How PR Changed Thinking on Water Conservation in Australian Suburbs - Shaming has a Role - Click here to view this entry

How PR Changed Thinking on Water Conservation in Australian Suburbs - Shaming has a Role

Peter Curtain, Director, Allerton Communications
November 2016
Growing up in south-eastern Australia, I remember when water supply became a big issue. It was the ‘big dry’ of 1967, and you can gauge its severity on this ‘drought map’.
As spring became summer, reservoir levels around Melbourne began dropping. For weeks people hoped vainly for the sort of ‘cool change’ that in those parts turn skies from dazzling blue to storm-filled grey in min....
Gudge Theory The New Tool to Get Adolescents to Shower Shorter? - Click here to view this entry

Gudge Theory The New Tool to Get Adolescents to Shower Shorter?

Cath Hassell www.ech2o.co.uk
September 2016
A few UK shower facts. (From At Home with Water from the Energy Savings Trust). The average person in the UK uses 150 litres of water a day, 47 litres of which are for bathing. 2 billion litres of water are used in the UK’s showers every day. The average shower lasts 7.5 minutes. The average person runs the shower for 1.75 minutes before getting under it. (A future blog subject that’s for sure....

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