Making your school water efficient

Stage 1: Identification of current use

The first step to achieving a reduction in water use is understanding current usage.

Review your water bills to build up a picture of consumption:

• Use actual readings rather than estimated readings (indicated by an 'E').
• Where possible try to get bills that cover a period of at least a year; this will help take seasonal variation into account.
• If your consumption is in litres, divide by 1,000 to give cubic metres (m³).
• Work out the number of full school attendance days within the bill period. Identify the number of pupils and staff on site (for part time workers, class two employees as one etc).
• Divide your consumption figure by the number of full school attendance days to give your daily consumption value. If data is not available for the whole year, ensure that only school days are taken into account for any other period calculated.
• Divide your daily amount by the number of people on site. To turn daily m³/person back into litres, multiply by 1,000.