WATEF Blog Archive

We all know that Covid-19 is a respiratory illness and you catch it by inhaling infected droplets, but can the virus that causes it (SARS-CoV-2) be found in wastewater and if so is that a good or a bad thing?

Imaginative and immersive experiences as a child can last a life time and at a time where the planet faces a range of challenges, we need to engage children and young people in positive, action-orientated ways.



From June 2018-July 2019, a team of engineers and engagement professionals embarked on a project for children focusing on the urban water cycle, flooding and sustainable drai....

An average person in the UK uses 140 litres of water per day. That may seem like a lot, but when you consider our everyday uses such as showering, bathing, toilet flushing, washing dishes, washing cars, watering gardens and of course drinking, it all adds up. But out of those 140 litres you use, how many of those do you drink? Doesn't it seem like a waste to treat water to drinking quality j....

This year’s study trip takes us to Hamburg, to see how HAMBURG WASSER are building innovative wastewater technology: the HAMBURG WATER Cycle into a new residential district; the Jenfelder Au.

Across the nation, water fittings and appliances are being bought and installed every day. The daily grind of going to work, to school and just getting things done at home, means that 66 million people are using these fittings and appliances, morning and night. This adds up to an incredible amount of water – well over 9 billion litres used in just our homes each day.

So how can we reduc....

Dawn Murphy explores the aims and objectives of our partner project - REDAWN. The REDAWN project (Reducing Energy Dependency in Atlantic Area Water Networks) aims to foster the adoption of hydropower energy recovery technology in built water networks in the Atlantic Area (AA). The project involves 15 partners from 5 countries. The WATEF Network contributes to two work packages in this project. <....

Readers will know that in the UK we each use, on average, 140 litres of water per day. At the 2019 Waterwise annual conference a few weeks ago, we focused on getting to 100 litres or less. Sir James Bevan put a lot of welcome oxygen on the subject with his now infamous ‘Jaws of Death’ speech, in which he said ‘We need water wastage to be as socially unacceptable as blowing smoke in the face ....

This year’s World Water Day was on the 22nd of March, a day when we all consider the importance of water to life, health, livelihood and wellbeing. It is also a time to pause and think about the 2.1 billion people who still lack access to safely managed drinking water services and the 4.5 billion people who lack safely managed sanitation services.

For many years, a silo mentality has existed in the regulatory world that has permeated through to designers, architects and tradesmen. Whatever topic or item they are dealing with has been considered in isolation. This has created conflicting requirements, guidance and practices that have tended to hinder progress to newer and more ecological ways of doing things.

Of all the weird and wonderful things that find their way into our sewers, micropollutants are some of the most difficult to remove. Dr Jannis Wenk (University of Bath) explores what effects these pollutants have on our environment, and what technologies can be employed to remove these before they reach the food chain.

Over one million litres of natural hot spring water at up to 45°C rises in the centre of Bath every day flowing through the Roman Baths and the Great Drain to discharge into the River Avon. Bath Abbey plans to recovery energy from the water in the Great Drain for heating of the Abbey as part of the much broader £20m Footprint Project currently underway on site...

What value does certification place on water?

We discuss the challenge of assessing the true impact of sustainability certification on water efficiency in buildings. And in 2018, do these fixed scoring systems go far enough for water?

Our October blog focussed on the influence of smart metering on the efficiency, operation and management of current and future urban water systems. This result seems to me to be quite inspirational and made me think about a number of questions beyond all the current and future smart-technology available...

Pressure on limited water resources and frequent combined sewer overflow (CSO) spills due to external scenarios such as climate change and ever-increasing population growth, means that our water systems and infrastructure are under increasing pressure. This has led stakeholders to explore more efficient strategies for management of water resources and demand. Thanks to the technological advancemen....

Okay. Apologies for the ‘B’ word. I guess most people have had enough already by now. However, it is within this context that the Water Efficiency network takes to Europe, Portugal in fact, as we continue to maintain ‘strong and stable’ links with our European neighbours and partners.

In March 2018 we effectively faced a major drought occurring within the space of several days – we need to have much greater engagement with customers in order to deal with all resilience issues and water efficiency is a key aspect of this.

Five years ago, I was a (very stressed) research student searching for data: domestic water consumption data from an adequate number of homes in the UK that would help me answer the question – Do water efficiency programmes in the UK lead to a decrease in domestic water demand and if so, how much water is being saved?

Adnams have introduced new technology into our brewery and distillery to reduce both water and energy consumption. This is a huge chapter in our sustainability story – our distillery water consumption should reduce by about half and our energy (and carbon emissions) will reduce by around 15%.

You’ve probably heard about the energy trilemma. Well, the water sector is facing its own trilemma: it needs to allocate increasingly scarce resources of water among citizens, the economy and the environment if it’s to avoid a damaging conflict between them.

When I was a child, I used to observe all the antiques my parents had around the house. I particularly liked some objects that were, in fact, the bathroom of my great grandparents (Fig. 1) and never thought that the nowadays bathroom, that I always took for granted, could have been so different. Around the same time, I remember to find very awkward that my grandmother used to have a small “potty....

Cape Town’s water crisis is now big news globally, though it has been exercising the minds of the four million city dwellers since this time last year. As I write this blog 'Day Zero' is now July 9th (a grace period of almost three months since the beginning of February when it was estimated to be mid-April) and still too close for comfort. Day Zero is when the water level in the six d....

Demand for water and the capacity of infrastructure systems to meet it varies widely in cities across the world. In cities with growing populations and finite water resources, reducing per capita consumption of water is an obvious strategy for making existing water resources serve more people. As readers of this blog well know, managing demand for water is far from simple. Reliable access to clean....

It seems that everyone in the UK has an opinion on leakage from public water supply systems – usually that it is ‘wasteful’, ‘too high’; or ‘more should be done’ – but how does perception compare with reality? Is this ‘group-think’ or is it based on logical analysis of factual data, using international ‘fit for purpose’ performance comparisons? Is there any widely accepted ....

A leaky loo doesn’t sound very nice. Is it foul water leaking? Where is leaking, onto the floor? Luckily that’s not what we are talking about but ‘leaky loos’ are easily misunderstood. So just to clarify, in this blog we are talking about toilets leaking clean water from the cistern into the bowl, often just a barely visible trickle down the toilet pan causing some ripples in the bowl wate....

This project is sponsored by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) and the blog below was written by the project’s Masters by Research student, Mitchell McTough and landscape architect Simon Watkins on visits to various refugee camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). When camps are set up, bearing in mind these are associated with situations of crisis and offer displaced people somewhere s....

Clean water, access to sanitation, and an understanding of good hygiene practices are essential for the survival and development of children. So who better to empower to tackle local and global water issues than young people themselves?
As the leaders of tomorrow, young people are going to be key to achieving the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 6 – access to....

n the UK it is an offence to supply water unfit for human consumption under Section 70 of the Water Industry Act (1991) and similar legislation applies in Germany. Water supplied to buildings must be pure and suitable for drinking purposes without any health risks, containing neither pathogens nor other substances in health-damaging concentrations. To meet this legislation water suppliers deliver ....

Over many years of giving introductions to economics to water specialists, I learnt that the best way of discouraging them from zoning out was to start by asking how many of them disagreed with at least one of the following statements:

• Astrology offers greater intellectual rigour than economics.
• Accountancy provides greater intellectual excitement than economics.
• ....

It’s something we all use but seldom discuss or even think about. Yet the toilet is the subject of an ongoing revolution aimed at boosting performance, conservation and even luxury. Peter Curtain* reports.

Visiting a farm as a boy in Australia, I had a memorable moment walking back to the house in pitch darkness after nature called. I got lost in a crop field then saw the veranda lig....

A while ago, I asked some folks at a social event, as one does during a conversation lull, what they thought about their shower (The question was deliberately vague). The main responses were: “I like to shower”, “nobody takes baths anymore” and, “I can’t do without a shower in the morning”. Not one person said that: “I spend 5 minutes or less in the shower you know”, “I am in t....