WATEF Blog Archive

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 t....

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 f....

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....

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?

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 mak....

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?: 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....

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 o....

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 ....

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 Medi....

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 ....

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 ....

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’....