Water & Wastewater Treatment

062 www.atiuk.com www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | march 2015 | 31 In the know Digging deeper: water management Meeting the 20:20 challenge Water management should be one of our nation's top priorities, and everyone involved in the industry has an important role to play It is well understood that water management is a global problem. However, what is perhaps less well understood (certainly by the general public) is how crucial an issue this is for the UK. The Environment Agency predicts that total water demand in England and Wales could increase 35% by the 2050s. And yet, climate change projec- tions for the UK also suggest that by the 2050s summer temperatures will increase and summer rainfall will decrease to such an extent that regular water shortages are likely. Managing our available supplies of clean water is therefore vital, and yet Mark Hodgens managing DirecTor Talis UK even in election year, the issue barely gets a mention behind hot political issues such as the NHS, immigration and the economy. At the last election in 2010 the manifestos of the three major parties dedicated a total of eight paragraphs to domestic water issues – with not one of the three mentioning water before page 53. Therefore, in the absence of political pressure and public concern, responsibility for securing our nation's future water supplies must fall on everyone who works in the water man- agement process. The scale of the chal- lenge requires the active participation of all with the power to affect change, however small – engineers, construc- tion workers, distributors, plumbers – not just the water companies. So where should we direct our efforts? At Talis UK, we talk about a 20:20 challenge for water management; to work to reduce individual daily water usage in the UK by 20 litres and reduc- ing the amount of water lost through leakages by 20%. The domestic opportunity An average, daily use of 150 litres per day equates to about a tonne of water each week. All of this water has been cleaned, treated and pumped to our homes. Every last drop of it has been purified so that it is clean enough to drink. And what do we do with the major- ity of it? Either flush it down the toilet, wash ourselves or clean our dirty clothes or plates in it. 84% of all of our clean water is used for these purposes. Just 4% of our high quality drinkable water is ever actually drunk. Clearly our domestic usage of water represents a major opportunity for bet- ter water management, either through reducing our average consumption or by finding more efficient ways to re-use and recycle water that is fit for a specific purpose. Plugging The Leaks Water companies work hard to reduce leakages from the system and since 2005 the total amount of water lost through leakages has come down by just over 8%. However, it is still the case that every single day in the UK 3.36 bil- lion litres of drinkable water are lost through leaks. For each water company, that's an average of one in

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