Waterwise has worked with the Environment Agency and a range of partners with expertise in water efficiency behaviour change initiatives to prepare a new toolkit to enable a standard approach to reporting on behaviour change projects in the UK.

The purpose of the toolkit is to ensure water efficiency behaviour change projects can be evaluated using a consistent framework and compared effectively. Future projects will be able to build on the learnings of previous work and the toolkit seeks to improve the effectiveness of behaviour change initiatives.

Importantly the toolkit can also be used before the initiation of behaviour change interventions, to help guide project planning and steer the delivery of initiatives. Measuring campaigns helps us know what works and what doesn’t. This is critical to enabling effective delivery of long-term behaviour change and delivering sustained water savings. Its effective use will foster open and transparent information-sharing, and will enhance lesson-learning and practice improvement into the future.

The evaluation toolkit is intended for all water efficiency practitioners, those tasked with behaviour change projects, to reflect on and assess the delivery of interventions that seek to motivate behaviour change at various scales. It is designed to be simple to use, user-friendly, light touch and, importantly, informed by industry experience and expertise.

This published toolkit is a first phase of work. We are now planning to work with practitioners to test using the toolkit so we can make sure it is usable and then begin to embed its use across the water efficiency community.