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How To Reduce Your Water Use At Work This Year
As much as it should be the responsibility of businesses to prioritise commercial water saving across their sites, it’s also important that company owners and managers stress the importance of reducing water usage to their members of staff as well.
It’s probable that your employees have never really considered the amount of water that they use, not just with regards to what comes out of the tap but also how much water is used to provide them with all the latest mod-cons and so on.
According to National Geographic, a desktop computer for example will have taken about 7,300 gallons of water to make. And growing the coffee beans required for a brew in the morning will have taken approximately 34 gallons. So working out water footprints might be harder than at first thought!
Speaking to the news source, director of the Global Water Policy Project Sandra Postel – who has just written a new book about water called Replenish – explained that there are ways people can try to conserve water to help protect supplies.
For example, buying recycled items can be useful because you’re not using water to making new products. Becoming more aware of how much water it takes in the manufacturing process is the first step to shrinking our footprints, so shopping for more recycled items, turning off lights when not in use, biking and walking more than using cars, and combining errands to reduce the amount we’re driving were all suggested by Ms Postel as ways to reduce water usage.
“The challenges are big, no question about it. These are very serious issues and they’re not going to be easy to solve. But what allows me to be optimistic is being able to point to solutions in each of these critical areas. There are examples in each of these areas of how we can repair and replenish the water cycle. It can be done,” she went on to say.
From a business perspective, it obviously makes sense to encourage your workers to save water wherever they can because it means your water bills will drop – and you’ll give your green credentials a boost, which will mean others view your company and its operations more favourably.
You might like to put up some signs around the office and your site as a whole to remind people to turn off the taps when washing their hands, turning them back on to rinse. Or perhaps put a note up in the kitchen to remind them to compost their food scraps instead of washing them down the sink to use less water.
Make sure that your team knows that your company is focusing on water conservation moving forward. You could even include policies in the handbook so everyone knows that sustainability is an integral concept to the management of the company. If you’d like any further help or advice, get in touch with us today.