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Water demand
Published in William Sarni, Tamin Pechet, Water Tech, 2013
We are seeing increased water efficiencies in domestic water fixtures. For example, the USEPA launched WaterSense.28 The USEPA WaterSense program is a partnership program designed to offer consumers a simple way to use less water with water-efficient products, new homes, and services. “WaterSense brings together a variety of stakeholders to: promote the value of water efficiency;provide consumers with easy ways to save water, as both a label for products and an information resource to help people use water more efficiently;encourage innovation in manufacturing; anddecrease water use and reduce strain on water resources and infrastructure.
Water Soft Path Thinking in the United States
Published in David B. Brooks, Oliver M. Brandes, Stephen Gurman, Making the Most of the Water We Have: The Soft Path Approach to Water Management, 2009
Regulatory tools include policies taken by governments to encourage water conservation and efficiency improvements, better water quality management, groundwater oversight, as well as a variety of initiatives, including raising appliance efficiency standards, adopting landscape ordinances that promote less water use and changing building codes to mandate higher energy and water efficiency. Economic incentives for smart water use include marginal cost, volumetric water prices, rebates for water saving end-use devices or practices, low-cost loans or assistance in obtaining credit for capital invest-ments by customers, environmental fees or surcharges that allow compensation for those damaged by additional water withdrawals (e.g. fishermen) and trading of water rights or water use permits.
California’s Irrigated Agriculture and Innovations in Adapting to Water Scarcity
Published in Kathleen A. Miller, Alan F. Hamlet, Douglas S. Kenney, Kelly T. Redmond, Water Policy and Planning, 2017
A variety of strategies are available to help California farmers adapt to water scarcity. Water efficiency improvements—defined as measures that reduce water use without affecting the benefits water provides—have been shown to be cost-effective and flexible tools to adapt to water scarcity. Studies show that while Cali-fornia farmers are much more efficient than they were a decade ago, significant efficiency potential remains. Moreover, boosting local supplies through water reuse and groundwater recharge can further promote the long-term sustainability of the state’s agricultural sector.
United Nation’s sustainable development goals: establishing baseline for Australian building sector
Published in Intelligent Buildings International, 2021
I. M. Chethana S. Illankoon, Vivian W. Y. Tam, Khoa N. Le
The main intent of water efficiency credits in LEED v3 is to increase water efficiency and to reduce potable water usage (United States Green Building Council 2016). Further, ‘SDG6 Clean water and sanitation’ focus on similar aims (United Nations (UN) 2018a). Greer et al. (2019) illustrated that buildings contribute to climate change, yet LEED water efficiency credits can achieve multiple magnitudes of sustainability targets. Water efficiency credits pave the way for water use reduction, water efficiency, and innovative technologies for water efficiency. All these credits have a significant impact on achieving SDG targets such as ‘SDG12: Responsible consumption’, ‘SDG13 Climate action’ and SDG15: Life on land’. Table 3 reports all water efficiency credits and the inter-links among SDGs.
Information-based interventions for household water efficiency in England and Wales: evidence, barriers and learning opportunities
Published in International Journal of Water Resources Development, 2020
As a consequence, it appears increasingly unclear what a ‘behaviour/behavioural change approach to water efficiency’ actually refers to. It gets even worse when the term is casually and wrongly used interchangeably with ‘behavioural economics approach to water efficiency’. The latter is not a generic term and has clear social and psychological underpinnings, which we will discuss under ‘Understanding the Conceptual Framework’. Since the changes driven by having water-efficient devices installed can be different from the changes driven by water-efficient messages, replacing the generic label with more specific definitions is the first step to separate out the effects of different mechanisms (e.g., recall Figure 1). While it is common and usually helpful to combine alternative interventions to pursue water efficiency, understanding the nature and effectiveness of each component is crucial in establishing the most efficient and cost-effective approach to water efficiency.
Simulating the impact of water demand management options on water consumption and wastewater generation profiles
Published in Urban Water Journal, 2021
Seyed M. K. Sadr, Line T. That, Will Ingram, Fayyaz A. Memon
Some countries have implemented more comprehensive policies to rate and certify sustainable buildings across the country. In the United States and many other industrialised countries, policies are focused on public educational campaigns, use of utility water prices to incentivize conservation, investments in more efficient distribution infrastructure, and regulations on new residential development (Barnett et al. 2020; Liang, Henderson, and Kee 2018). In the UK, there is an effort to promote efficiency through regulation and intervention from water companies (Manouseli, Kayaga, and Kalawsky 2019). The UK aims to reduce domestic consumption of potable water through the installation and use of water-efficient appliances and fittings and water recycling, such as Greywater Recycling (GWR) systems (DCLG 2010). GWR is acknowledged as greatly beneficial for water resource efficiency and economic savings for households (Mandal et al. 2011), and is gaining attention around the world (Juan, Chen, and Lin 2016; Oron et al. 2014). Water efficiency measures have become a requirement for the majority of the UK water companies and are promoted by the water regulators such as Ofwat and the Environment Agency (Manouseli, Kayaga, and Kalawsky 2019, 2017). The reduction of domestic water consumption can also be achieved to a certain extent through users’ behaviour change (Meireles et al. 2018; Sadr et al. 2016). In other words, domestic water consumption and its patterns very much depend on the characteristics of the household, fixtures, appliances and equipment, and on the factors related to the user (Meireles et al. 2018; Sadr et al. 2016). However, effective policies and practical strategies require detailed data on how and where household water is used (Makki et al. 2013; Stewart et al. 2009).