New research, commissioned through the water industry collaborative fund for Waterwise’s Water Efficiency Strategy Steering Group, has found that a government-led mandatory water label linked to building regulations and fittings standards could reduce personal water consumption by up to 30 litres per person per day within 25 years. Phase 2 Summary Report (2019); Phase 2 Technical Report (2019) 

Background There is ever growing pressure on governments, water companies, manufacturers and wider society to reduce demand on water resources. As the impacts of climate change and population growth are realised by way of drought and flooding events across the UK, the need to act has never been more urgent. The framework for action exists. The UK Government has outlined plans to align with industry to define ambitious consumption targets as part of their 25 year environmental plan “A Green Future”. Published shortly afterwards was the “Preparing for a drier future”1 report by the National Infrastructure Commission estimating that the economic impacts of severe restrictions in England could be as high as £40 billion.

With this mounting evidence, the Government and water industry need to implement changes and initiatives to meet these ambitious future targets and work towards safeguarding future water supplies. In 2018 EST were commissioned by the Collaborative Fund and Waterwise, with the support of Defra, to model the cost:benefit of introducing a water labelling scheme to drive market transformation and consumer purchasing behaviour in the UK. The findings of the study were that a government-led mandatory scheme linked to building regulations and minimum standards is projected to reduce per capita consumption by 31.4 litres per day over a 25 year period. This option had the most favourable cost:benefit ratio of all the modelled scenarios. In light of these findings, EST has been commissioned to revisit and build on the cost:benefit analysis to include different target scenarios and to look at policy and regulatory routes for implementing these scenarios. The detailed methods and results are presented in this technical report. It is accompanied by a Summary Report and an Executive Summary.

The research is very timely, providing evidence that will be submitted on the value of such a scheme which Waterwise and the industry will be submitting to Defra as part of their consultation and evidence gathering measures to reduce personal water, click here.

For further information get in touch with nathan.richardson@waterwise.org.uk