Water Group Promotions is again a proud sponsor of the Waterwise Water Efficiency Conference, to be held in Oxford on 8-9 April 2008.
The third Waterwise Water Efficiency Conference - part of UNESCO’s World Water Day events programme - brings together the leading policy makers, doers and thinkers on water efficiency, both as speakers and participants to discuss the economics and logistics of water efficiency programmes.
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Water Group Promotions is delighted to be partnering with Alpro Soya to promote the Year of Wellbeing.
WGP will be attending the Alpro wellbeing day on Sunday 17th February 2008 at Danesfield House in Marlow. The focus of the day will be on Wellbeing with speakers talking on a range of subjects including psychology, nutrition and the environment.
110 volunteer Alpro ambassadors will also be attending the event each one of them having volunteered to participate and promote the year of wellbeing. They will take the wellbeing message back to their communities, and play their own part in taking small steps to make a big difference.
'Changing our lives for the better seems easier said than done. Wellbeing concerns our whole life: our health, the food we eat, our relationships, our working lives, our leisure activities, the communities we live in, the environment we share, as well as our own happiness and sense of fulfilment'.
Nicholas Buhler, Water Group Promotions's MD, will be attending the event and will be leading a breakout session on water & energy saving.
Water companies have been given approval for the compulsory installation of meters in millions of houses across southern England by 2015.
The area stretches from the Thames Valley in the West to Dover in the South East, including London and the Home Counties, where there are regular water shortages.
The companies affected are Bournemouth and West Hampshire Water, Cambridge Water, Essex and Suffolk Water, Folkestone and Dover Water, Mid Kent Water, Portsmouth Water, South East Water, Southern Water, Sutton and East Surrey Water, Thames Water and Three Valleys Water
The rest of the country should have meters fitted by 2030, the Government said.
Homeowners will also need planning permission to pave over their front and back gardens. Surface water was a significant cause of last summer’s flooding in the North.
The Government has published its new water strategy for England. Called Future Water it sets out the Government’s long-term vision for water and the framework for water management in England.
In it, among many other points, the Government states that it believes there is scope for incumbent water companies to extend their focus from being providers of basic water and sewerage services to becoming water service companies – providers of water efficiency goods and services, alongside and in partnership with new entrants and other third parties.
They say that for household customers, there is likely to be growing demand for goods and services that will help save and reuse water and avoid wastage as the uptake of meters increases.
See the whole document.
Thames Water is changing the way it charges un-metered customers. The changes mean that bills will go down for people living in smaller homes, but will rise for those in mid-sized and larger homes. Read the story in full.
The Daily Telegraph recently carried an article on the world's growing demands for water, and our inability to meet them. The authors, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, and Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman and chief executive officer of Nestlé, say "As we continue to grow our world economy and population, we are becoming a much thirstier world. It is important to realise just how much water we need to make every aspect of our economy work. And we need to adapt our water use to a fast-changing world while we still can."
They go on to describe just how much water is required to produce everyday items. Every litre of petrol requires up to 2.5 litres of water to produce it. On average, crops grown for their bio-energy need at least 1,000 litres of water to make one litre of bio-fuel. It takes about 2,700 litres of water to make one cotton T-shirt, up to 4,000 litres of water to produce a kilo of wheat and up to 16,000 litres to produce a kilo of beef.
Schab and Brabeck-Letmathe report that the International Water Management Institute found that we will not have enough water to supply global demand for food over the next few decades unless urgent and substantial reforms in water and agriculture are undertaken.
They go on to say "The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says if average temperature rises by 3C, hundreds of millions of people will be exposed to increased water stress. It provides the wake-up call we all need to start acting on water. We can see this crisis unfolding over the next few years. A perfect storm is approaching. And all this sits on top of the morally indefensible situation of today where 20% of the world's population are without access to clean water." They state their aim to "... catalyse at this year's Davos meeting an unprecedented, high impact public-private coalition to help find ways for us all to manage our future water needs before the crisis hits."
See the full article on the Daily Telegraph's website. The article appeared in the Personal View column of the paper's Business News section on Monday 21st January 2008.
The next steps in an action plan to deliver greater water efficiency have been set out by Environment Minister Phil Woolas as he confirmed that a key cross-industry group will operate for another year.
The Water Saving Group (WSG) brings together a range of water industry bodies and was set up two years ago to encourage greater efficiency in the way consumers use water. Its members include Ofwat, the Environment Agency, the Consumer Council for Water, Defra, Water UK, Communities and Local Government, and Waterwise.
Over the past two years the group has helped drive a number of important developments to contribute to greater water efficiency.
Publishing the revised action plan today, Phil Woolas said:
"Water is a valuable resource. Our supply is limited, but pressure on it is likely to keep rising. We have to be cleverer about how we use water, and that means being more efficient and wasting less.
"The Water Saving Group has scored some important successes towards helping this happen, and not least that a range of organisations, each with its own priorities, has continued to engage constructively and find common ground for making progress on water efficiency. That alone is evidence of how very important this issue is now, and will become increasingly, as stress on our water resources increases."
The overarching aim of the Group is to reduce the current level of per capita consumption in households. Members have agreed to work together on a package of measures, each covering different aspects of water efficiency. They have identified a number of key areas for future work, including:
Jacob Tompkins, Director of Waterwise, said: "The water saving group is an excellent example of policy groups working together. We have seen many examples of water efficiency progress over the last two years but there is much more to do. It is only by everybody working together that we can ensure a sustainable water supply for the future.W
Water Group Promotions took part in The Sustainability Show at the O2 in London on October 26-28. Among our visitors was the well-known naturalist, David Bellamy.
The show's theme was that we can all help sustain and maintain our environment now and keep it safe for generations to come. WGP heartily agrees with this and we attended, along with Waterwise, to promote water efficiency and the saving of this precious resource.
Did you know that each person in the UK currently uses about 150 litres of water every day? This has been rising by 1% since 1930, a trend that is not sustainable in the long-term.
Water Group Promotions recently attended and exhibited at Wessex Water's Water Efficiency Workshop.
The workshop brought together building developers, planners, water saving device suppliers manufactures and councillors.
A lively debate took place discussing the following topics:
Water Group Promotions attended the Global Water Efficiencies Conference on 25-26 June, in London.
With the growing need to maintain adequate water supplies in the face of low rainfall and planned urban developments, the UK water utilities must evaluate the cost benefits and payback of water saving devices against the priorities of the consumer and the efficiency, installation and operation of new and existing technologies. Recognising the economics and value of water saving devices in both the domestic and commercial spheres is integral to ensure the regulatory bodies plan effectively to incorporate the cost of these devices within their budgets and thereby bring important financial and environmental savings.
As part of our continuing efforts to promote water saving in the home, Water Group Promotions provided Moorfield School for Girls with a Ripple shower timer for each pupil and member of staff.
Alan Titchmarsh visited the school (a registered Eco-School) recently and was presented with a shower timer of his very own!
The Eco-Schools programme provides a simple framework to enable a school to analyse its operations and become more sustainable. The programme is rooted in a genuine desire to help children become more effective citizens by encouraging them to take responsibility for the future of their own environment. More information.
Water Group Promotions is proud to annouce that it is the UK distributor of Ripple Products.
The range of Ripple Products is now available to the consumer and, for larger orders with volume discounts, the water industry and retail trade.
Amongst other recommendations they proposed that the Government should work with water companies and regulators to develop a Water Efficiency Commitment (WEC) whereby companies are set water efficiency targets to deliver water savings.
This process is already well underway in the gas and electricity industries where the Energy Efficiency Commitment (EEC) imposes a statutory obligation upon electricity and gas suppliers to meet a target for the promotion of improvements in energy efficiency among consumer households.
The current EEC (EEC2) runs from April 2005 to March 2008 and the government is already in consultation regarding EEC3 which will run from 2008-11.
IPPR envisage an input driven WEC (based on agreed and established energy savings per efficiency fittings or service). The WEC, it is felt, will provide market certainty to suppliers of water efficient fittings and water efficiency products and therefore encourage innovation and increasing customer contact and promotion and take up of water efficient devices.
Water Group Promotions supports the IPPR in calling for an input driven Water Efficiency Commitment from water companies and aim to be at the forefront in assisting water companies to meet their targets.
We strongly believe that there is considerable scope to work with water companies to grow the Business to Consumer (B2C) marketing of water efficiency products and are researching the viability of investing in B2C with our partners in the water industry.
Copies of the IPPR report can be obtained from the IPPR website
Volume 1 of the 8th Report of session 2005-6 was printed in June 2006 and is fast becoming a modern day state of the nation reference relating to water management and water efficiency in particular.
The 160 page Volume 1 report covers a wide range of water resources issues and is presented in a very readable fashion considering the complex issues that it deals with.
Of particular interest is the Science and Technical Committee (STC’s) view on the promotion of water efficiency. Ofwat and the Environment Agency are called on to work together to ensure that water companies maximise their promotion of water efficiency and are given the necessary resources to do so.
There was consideration of the difference in interpretation between the Environment Ministers views of the “twin track” approach and the view of representatives from the Water Industry and the Environment Agency. The STC agreed that an appropriate view would be to take a balanced view in seeking the efficient use of water while at the same time bringing forward timely proposals for resource development where appropriate.
The STC viewed that the balance between water efficiency and water resources was not necessarily a purely economic argument and urged Ofwat to do more to positively incentivise water companies to step up their water efficiency activities.
The STC viewed that Ofwat has placed insufficient importance on the promotion of water efficiency by water companies and that the new Ofwat board should therefore make it a top priority to provide genuine incentives to encourage water companies to invest more in promoting water efficiency.
Ofwat and the Environment Agency are called on by the STC to work together to ensure that water companies are encouraged to undertake water efficiency initiatives in future price reviews.