Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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The Knowledge www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | NOVEMBER 2019 | 19 Getting personal Save Water Save Money's aqKWa Savings Engine is helping people around the world to understand precisely how they can reduce water consumption By Robin Hackett T he water efficiency message is gaining ground, with head- lines about short- ages highlighting the dangers of complacency and national campaigns helping to underline water's value. Raising public awareness is vital if the industry is to cope with the challenges to come, but equally important is the need to help people under- stand where and how the necessary efficiencies might be made. "Any noise in the indus- try is always good to raise awareness around water efficiency," Save Water Save Money founder and CEO Tim Robertson says. "However, we would argue that in order to deliver the call to action, it needs to be personalised to each individual. "If you walk past a poster that says, 'Take a short shower', you might notice it but think it doesn't apply to you, since nobody's ever told you what constitutes a short shower." Save Water Save Money therefore, takes a bespoke approach to driving down con- sumption. Set up in 2007, the company has a long history of promoting water-efficiency products and helping water utilities manage home audits but has stepped up its efforts on individualisation in recent years with the aqKWa Savings Engine. The web portal enables members of the public to provide data on their house- hold consumption – such as how long people spend in the shower and how they go about washing their car and water- ing their garden – and offers guidance on where improve- ments could be made that can save them money as well as benefiting the environment. As part of the free service, users can revisit the site, update their consumption information and chart their progress. "The key element is that water efficiency is something people adopt over time," Robertson says. "We're trying to change people's behaviour. If people take a 10-minute shower, they're not going to take a four-minute shower just because it says you're going to save a few hundred quid. You might go from 10 minutes to six minutes, though, and it might take you three years of coaching to get you there." The aqKWa Savings Engine was launched in February 2016 and the initial version brought in around 300,000 users. It was updated and enhanced two years later, primarily to ensure that it was fully opti- mised for mobile phone users, which comprise around 70 per cent of visitors. As a result of the improved design, Robertson says more than 82 per cent of those who start the process now com- plete the questionnaire, and they have data from around