Water is essential to life. Every day, we use it for drinking, bathing, cleaning, cooking and gardening. It is vital for many industries, a key ingredient for agriculture and an essential element in many of our leisure activities. It is also a finite and very precious resource.
We offer a free water advice and audit service, which provides a personalised report showing how a household can best save water. The Patel family, from Mt Albert, recently took advantage of this and say they learned some very simple ways to reduce their water use.
“The audit was really detailed – they checked every appliance that uses water as well as all the fittings,” Prashant Patel says. “The changes they suggested aren’t difficult for us to do, such as taking shorter showers, using the economy setting when doing laundry and only running the dishwasher when it’s full. They also installed flow restrictors on the showers to make them more efficient and left some shower timers, which have been a big hit with everyone!”
“The Patels were already very waterwise in their garden,” says Olivia Tukuogo, who works for the Watercare-funded EcoMatters water advice line, “but we left them a trigger to use with their garden hose to ensure water is used only when and where it is needed.”
Prashant says he encouraged other family members to have home water audits done as well, and they have all been very pleased with the service.
Watercare is committed to helping you use water wisely, but we’re also doing our bit to ensure we use water efficiently and contribute to a more sustainable Auckland.
By investing in more advanced metering technology we can more easily identify and reduce water leakage from our networks. We recycle and reuse treated wastewater at our wastewater treatment plants. We also carry out water efficiency audits at each of our water and wastewater treatment plants to make sure we reduce any unnecessary water use.
Reducing water use benefits us all. It means taking less water from the environment and generating less wastewater for treatment. It also means we can delay the need to develop new water sources and treatment capacities. Together, we can create a more sustainable Auckland.
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