Around 70% of all our drinking water supplied goes to customer homes. The average water use per person in Northern Ireland is around 170 litres per day. This compares to around 134 litres per day for metered customers and 174 litres per day for unmetered customers in England and Wales
We will work with government and stakeholders to find ways to encourage customers to use water as wisely as possible and to ensure homes are water efficient. This includes:
- Education - educating consumers on water efficiency and climate action. Water is precious and NI Water’s Water Efficiency Campaign works with local media, schools, groups and the wider public to highlight the simple things we can all do to use water wisely, benefiting society, the economy and protecting our natural environment. Our Education Programme delivers water efficiency lessons to schools and groups across NI, alongside providing free waterbutts to school and community gardens with over 250 projects benefitting from these over the past 5 years. Our online water audit, https://www.getwaterfit.co.uk encourages the public to ‘Get Water Fit’ and take part in water saving challenges, receiving free water saving items including 4 minute shower timers and swell gel bags for the garden; and
- Customer leakage - exploring new ways to help address leakage on customers’ own pipes, which is estimated to be around 25% of total leakage. We will work with government departments and other stakeholders including the NI Housing Executive and Housing Associations to consider the use of grants;
- Water efficiency labelling - supporting the introduction of a mandatory water efficiency label to inform consumers and encourage the purchase of more water efficient products for both domestic and business use;
- Developer incentives - looking for incentivises for developers to create water efficient homes and effectively deal with wastewater and rainwater;
- Building standards - encouraging local councils to adopt appropriate building standards on water efficiency;
- Water recycling - exploring how future building regulations can support the expansion of rainwater harvesting, water re-use and storage options.