Learn how to reduce your water usage

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers 

Planning this activity 

• This activity will take at least two sessions to complete, with some work at home for everyone to do to gather their water usage. 
• Make sure all participants have a printed copy of the activity sheets and have it ready to use. 
• Depending on the age group, parents and carers may need to be told about the activity. 

 Learning about our access to water  

1. Tell everyone that water’s usually readily accessible in the UK, as we can often get some at the turn of a tap.  
2. Explain that we’re often unaware of the environmental impact of our how much water we’re using or where it’s coming from.  
3. Ask if anyone has had ever experienced a hose pipe ban in the UK. Tell everyone that this is one way we can manage water to avoid a drought and can often remind everyone that water isn’t an endless resource. 
4. Tell people that in some countries, water isn’t readily available. For some countries, this may be because they suffer from periods of drought (lack of rain). For some countries, clean water can only be created by purifying dirty water or purifying seawater, which uses a lot of energy, so can be too expensive.
5. Ask everyone if they’ve ever spent time somewhere with no running water. If anyone has, ask them what this was like. 

Why do we need to save water 

1. Explain to everyone that there are three important reasons for people to save water. 
2. See if anyone can guess them. The three reasons are: 

• • Saving energy: Conserving water saves energy. Energy’s needed for lots of things in your home, such as heating and cooking, so reducing your water use also reduces your carbon footprint. 
  • Saving the environment: Using less water keeps more in our ecosystems and helps to keep wetland habitats well-saturated for animals, such as otters, water voles, herons and fish. This is especially important during drought periods and in areas, such as South East England, where there’s a big demand on water supplies.  
  • Saving money: Reducing the amount of water we use can save you money. If you’ve a water meter then the less water you use, the less you may be charged by your water company.  

Measuring water use in the home  

Explain that this activity aims to show us the amount, or volume, of water we use. We’re going to do this by spending a week recording our water use in the home. Give everyone a copy of the activity sheet and ask them to complete it over the next week. You may want to talk through what everyone needs to. 

Getting back together 

1. At your next session, ask everyone to bring in their sheets. 
2. Everyone, with an adult volunteer’s help if needed, should add up their water usage.  
3. Ask everyone if their results are surprising. 
4. Ask everyone which element was the most surprising. 
5. Get everyone to discuss the ways they can reduce water usage. 
6. Explain that some water can be recycled or reused. Some examples of recycling or reusing water include water from sinks, showers or baths.  
7. Ask everyone where they think water could be recycled or reused in our homes. People suggest ideas, such as using washing up water to water plants or reusing leftover drinking water on plants. 

Learning about greywater 

1. Tell everyone that water used and coming into our homes from the mains is clean drinking water and is also known as potable water.  
2. Explain that we often think of sewage as going out as the only wastewater from our homes. This is known as blackwater, as it’s contaminated with human waste, which can contain harmful bacteria and disease-causing pathogens. Roughly a third of the water used in households is used in toilets and is known as blackwater. 
3. Ask everyone what about the rest of the wastewater? See what people think about wastewater from baths, showers, washing machines, dishwashers and sinks. Let people share their ideas. 
4. Explain that wastewater from baths, showers, washing machines, dishwashers and sinks referred to as greywater, which typically makes up between 50-80% of a household’s wastewater. 
5. Tell everyone that greywater is much easier to treat and recycle when compared with blackwater as there’s no household waste in it. If recycled properly, greywater can save approximately 70 litres of potable water per person, per day in domestic households.  
6. Explain that greywater recycling is one of several water solutions that we can look into in order to decrease our usage, but this may not work for everyone. 

Improving our usage 

1. Ask everyone to gather in small groups and come up with some ideas of ways to save water. They can write them down. 
2. Gather back together in a big circle. 
3. Read out the following tips and ask groups to put their hand up if they had written down the idea. It doesn’t matter how many each group get! 
4. The tips are: 

Sharing the knowledge 

1. Everyone should choose their favourite three tips. 
2. They should now make a poster, or piece of artwork, to share why conserving water is important and some tips to help others.  
3. See if you can put them up in the local community. 

Taking what we learn home 

1. Now give everyone a new sheet to manage their water usage. 
2. See if this time people can use what they’ve and can they reduce their usage. 
3. Gather everyone back together the following week and compare the results.