Information Sheet - Waterwise Businesses
Background
Businesses use about 60 gigalitres of water from the IWSS water grid each year – that’s 21% of all water use.
The Water Corporation conducts a Waterwise Business Program to help business reduce water usage. Becoming more water wise can reduce costs, improve efficiency and provide other business benefits.
The Water Corporation has been focusing on business customers who use more than 20,000 kilolitres a year. It is a free service, conducted at their workplace where we help them to analyse their water use.
Business executives participate to develop agreed actions. The Water Corporation helps with implementation by providing ongoing support through resource tools, benchmarking and case study information. We also provide tangible support such as loaned meters to monitor high water use areas.
For example, Edith Cowan University has worked with us as part of this program. Over the past 8 years they have been committed to a major construction program which presented an opportunity to introduce cost effective water saving fixtures and fittings. Reductions of over 30% of conventional installations have been achieved in some areas.
They have also installed waterless urinals, sensor flush toilets and water efficient showerheads in student accommodation. Cooling towers gravity feed water to an artificial lake where it is mixed with bore water for reuse in campus reticulation.
The Belmont Forum Shopping Centre has also been an active participant in the program. They have implemented a range of improvements including the installation of sub-meters in all major shops. Shops owners pay for actual water use. Waterless urinals, sensor flushes and flow restrictors have been installed on all public toilets. Outside, the shopping centre has installed rain sensors and remote controllers to the landscaping reticulation system and planted a waterwise garden to reduce garden watering. Annual savings are over 35,000 kilolitres a year.
Coca Cola Amatil have reduced their water use by over 55,000 kilolitres a year, since their participation in the program in 2006. One initiative was to recover and reuse water from rinsing bottles. In addition, converting three production lines to Dry Lube has saved over 11,000 kilolitres a year. Their staff awareness program ‘Slow the Flow’ has been very successful with a water conservation team established to minimise water losses.
Current Situation
A total of 209 businesses have participated in the program to date. They include heavy industry in Kwinana, brewers, laundries, office buildings, major hotels, food manufacturers, universities, shopping centres and hospitals.
On average, the program is estimated to save about 11% of business water use. The graph below shows the reduction in scheme water use since 2001 by large business customers located in Perth’s metropolitan area.
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Waterwise Businesses are also making changes towards better water use efiiciency.
The first five Green Star Green Building Council of Australia office in Western Australia is being built at 140 William Street, Perth. The sustainable design features in the building focus on energy, water use efficiency and waste management. The building is expected to be completed by the end of 2009.
By the end of October 2007, 37 commercial buildings across Australia had been Green Star certified with a further 380 registered for certification. One of these buildings is the Council House 2 (CH2) in Melbourne, which has been awarded six Green Stars and won a United Nations Award, demonstrating outstanding leadership in sustainable building design.
There is further scope for new commercial building design in Perth to adopt the principles of the Green Star rating system.
The Future
The State Government’s new Water Efficiency Measures, announced in October 2007, require all businesses using more than 20,000 kilolitres of scheme water a year to complete an annual water management assessment and develop a water efficiency management plan by 1 July 2009. These requirements are mandated by legislation and also apply to all State Government Agencies.
These plans must be submitted to the Water Corporation and approved for implementation. It is expected that 320 business customers and 74 government agencies will have water efficiency management plans in place by 1 July 2009. These plans will be reviewed annually.This is expected to yield an additional 10% reduction in scheme water use by business and government agencies by 2014.