Consumption

Water used at home

If you’re like most people in the developed world, you don’t think much about water. Clean, drinkable water is delivered into your residence almost invisibly, and it’s always there when you turn on a tap or want to use your dishwasher, washing machine or take a shower.

In the Hunter in recent years we have been luckier than in other parts of Australia and have maintained supply, without the severe restrictions that have been common in major centres like Sydney, Brisbane and the Central Coast. But as populations grow and water supplies stay roughly constant, more and more pressure is being brought to bear on rivers, reservoirs, and groundwater aquifers and the need for conservation is something none of us can ignore.

It is important therefore to firstly understand how and where we use water so that we can all help to save it and only use the water that we really need.

In the Hunter Water region an average household uses 210 kilolitres per year.

When you remember that a kilolitre is 1000 litres, you realise just how much water that we all use – imagine 210,000 one litre water bottles and that’s a lot of water! If we were in a developing nation where we had to carry water, we would be transporting a huge 210 tonnes of water – and would probably be much more careful about how we used water at home.

In the Hunter every person in the region uses an average of 205 litres of water every day - and that's around 62,000 million litres, or enough to fill about 1.55 million backyard swimming pools.

For example, did you know that around half of indoor, household water consumption is in the bathroom, with 19% of this being from simply flushing the toilet? Showers, baths and teeth cleaning are also big users of water and most of us use 20% of our water in the laundry.

Other big areas are the kitchen (6 %) and lawns (which use up to 90% of the outdoor water used at home).

 

Water used in business

While there has been much publicity in recent years about saving water at home, we often forget that businesses can be huge consumers of water.

Some businesses require water for their very existence, but even these can be made more efficient and reduce overall consumption. For example, even commercial car washing services have been able to re-use a large proportion of their water and continue to operate an efficient service to their customers.

We have prepared some simple tips on saving water in the business environment to give all businesses some valuable pointers in saving water and money.