Managing your business water to save money and cut your carbon footprint. Businesses are looking at a set of tough additional budget challenges during 2025 to 2026. Utilities costs across the board pose a fresh challenge – including wholesale rate increases for many businesses, from April, for water.

Help is on hand though.
The award-winning team from Water Plus can help all businesses with managing their water costs. They’re the trusted water retail partner for over 360,000 customer accounts for organisations in England and Scotland. From supermarkets to multinational manufacturers, national chains to corner shops, the public sector to charities, they support organisations of all sizes across all sectors with their water accounts.

Small actions can make a big difference – boosting your business’s resilience, helping your bottom line and even saving you valuable time.
Cutting water use can cut costs and lead to energy savings where less water needs to be heated, or moved at sites – helping your efficiencies and lowering operational expenses. Reducing your water use, identifying cost savings and making your utility management more streamlined has an instant impact on your carbon footprint, ensuring your environmental impact as a business is efficiently managed.

The team at Water Plus have the following suggestions to follow:

1 – Monitor the water you’re using

Noting down water meter readings regularly – at least once a month, during the year – if you’re not already, is a great start. It gives you some initial data and insight, which helps budgeting and planning – and finding areas for efficiencies. Providing reads to your water retailer reduces estimated bills – giving you more control on costs. Customers with Water Plus can provide readings, in seconds, through their free MyAccount, at times suiting them. If it’s not safe to take a meter reading – or you need to track your use even closer each day – then data logger technology can be installed, feeding into an easily accessible online analysis portal. It takes away the manual walkaround checks, while providing greater detail. It’s amongst the services Water Plus can provide to help customers.

How data loggers can help…
During 2024, a manufacturer with data loggers installed by Water Plus was notified by the Water Plus Advanced Services team when their use increased from 3,000 litres an hour to 18,000 litres an hour.  They took steps to reduce this – isolating two large leaks, preparing them for repairs – resulting in water use dropping back to baseline levels within 48 hours.

2 – Make sure water pipes and equipment are working effectively

Regular checks at sites are worth the time, as they can show where water waste can occur. Dripping taps are an obvious issue, but other signs of leaks need to be addressed, for example water continually running in toilets. Stopping these quickly, when found, means less cost on bills, helping the bottom line. Sites seeing consistent leaks can have a review of their pipework through Water Plus’s services, to check integrity and pressure. The review identifies if any water pipes need replacing and helps business contingency planning and resilience – as leaks on site water pipes can stop water flows, causing interruptions to operations.

How site reviews can help…
Results from a recent survey showed that a site had additional water loss through leaks that could have cost an estimated £64,000 in wholesaler rate costs over a period of 12 months. These were identified in various locations at a distribution centre during a leak detection survey, provided through the Water Plus Advanced Services team, with 793 litres an hour of water identified as being lost, water meter data showed. Leaks were found in staff toilets in five locations including a urinal, and it’s worth noting these sorts of leaks have an ongoing impact on water bills if not identified and rectified promptly.

It’s also worth checking all water-using equipment is working effectively – and are on the most efficient water and energy settings. While this sounds obvious, at times it can be overlooked – particularly at busy sites. It delivers an efficiency gain at no extra cost.

3 – Explore low-cost efficiency devices to cut costs and carbon emissions

A 37% water-saving, on average daily use, has been seen by businesses and other sites from small efficiency devices installed through the Water Plus Advanced Services team. Low cost efficiency devices are available for businesses across all sectors and sizes, offering a very quick return on investment for those using them.

How to quickly cut costs…
Low-cost tap aerators are great at reducing flow rates – cutting the amount spent on water and lower energy costs with less hot water needed. Taps can use 6 litres of water, on average, a minute – though recent visits to businesses have found average flows can be higher, with some using 15 litres of water a minute. That’d fill 60 cups of coffee, holding 250ml each, every minute.

Tap aerators are a great low-cost method of reducing water use without having an impact on staff and customers. There are many more devices and actions for different businesses to use to reduce costs and become more water efficient – the Water Plus team are more than happy to review and advise options.

4 – Using Process Audits to plan more efficient water use

Key Account Managers at Water Plus are regularly visiting locations to work with multi-site and larger industrial customers to review how they’re using water. Amongst the customer support they provide, they can help to put in place bespoke water management plans, alongside showing how to improve trade effluent approaches and efficiencies.

How Process Audits can help…
Water Plus can provide process audits for businesses. This is an on-site review of how water is used in operational processes – and can help manufacturers and sites that use higher amounts of water to gain further efficiencies. These could potentially identify water, wastewater, energy and carbon savings, and includes data collection, equipment surveying and recommendations for improving water efficiency.

Save water
Boost efficiencies
Cut costs

For services contact: [email protected]
Tips and details on services: water-plus.co.uk/better-ways-with-water
To partner with Water Plus: [email protected]
water-plus.co.uk

Costs and savings in this article are for 2024. 37% average water-saving, on average daily use, across 59 sites that had water efficiency kit installed through business water retailer Water Plus.

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