I saw quite a bit about water and hygiene whilst on holiday in the UK.
We went to an old silk mill. I went to the loo. The loos there have all been twinned with loos in very poor places, via an organisation named Toilet Twinning. This is really set up for donations from the UK, but I think they would accept donations from anywhere. They claim that fully 1/3 of humanity has no access to latrines, and when they say “latrines” they include pits. So they take your donation, educate somebody about hygiene and help them add a loo to their house. And they rely on him to spread the word about hygiene, and they send you a picture (with GPS co-ordinates) of the loo you are now twinned with to hang in your own small room so that others may receive the message.
The government there is becoming concerned about water useage and conserving it as much as possible. They can’t enforce it by law (well, they could try, I suppose, but would it win an election?) but they do encourage people to be concious of their water use and to aim for a 125 liters per person per day. That target is about to be dropped to 110. They do require all newly constructed buildings to have certain features that make this target more easily acheivable.
Local government (in theory, at least) are all over the water supply companies who are accused of not doing proper maintenance and thus being responsible for significant water loss.
Shower timers have the end effect of cutting water usage - if they display to the showerer the time for which the water runs.
Studies also show an inverse relation between water consumption and the pressure of the jet of shower water. If you feel a good strong jet, you shower for less time and actually use less water. Who’d have thought?
See here which is flogging a particular product, but also provides data.
The real story here, of course, is that less water used in showers is less water that has to be heated, which means less energy used.
This is of interest in the UK because energy bills are a hot topic (ouch!) there.
Advertising can be effective! I got led to this study about water use in showers because I went to a venue named The King’s Place in London (to see Jake Blount, who was excellent, but that’s a tale for another forum). They have waterless urinals - and they advertise it. That’s right. You use what looks like a regular urinal, except it never flushes (it also doesn’t stink). The venue estimates this is saving 10s of 1000s of liters of water a month. The name of the company that provides these urinals (this includes training staff, because they must be cleaned in a different way) is included in the advertising (which is not all over the venue, but prominent in the Gent’s toilets).
The venue also had taps that only ran whilst your hands were actually under the outlet - meaning you can wash your hands without actually having to touch the tap at all. Similarly activated soap dispensers were built in, but positioned so that you have to move your hands away from the tap to get soap. All nice and hygienic.
They had high efficiency hand driers. No paper towels which usually end up in landfill or blocking your plumbing.
I noticed that a lot of businesses there were not keen on cash. Several restaurants that we went to just flat out refused to accept cash (they build the tip into the bill). I speculated about this. Perhaps if you don’t take cash you don’t have to worry about staff sticking their hands into the till, and there’s no need to cash up, manage floats etc.
But then I saw a sign on a pub in London that explained it all. It’s hygiene. Staff (or enough of them) don’t want to handle that note that’s been in your pocket. How many other pockets has it been in? How many other hands have touched it? What’s on it? It’s another hygiene/infection issue - possibly a hang over from the lock down.
There are signs everywhere of things that began during lockdown and have been retained because management finds it convenient.
I got into a dispute with a car hire company whose name begins with A. They agreed they owed me money. But they wouldn’t just refund to my credit card. They had a complicated system by which you could eventually get a credit voucher mailed to you. “It’s valid for 12 months, Sir.” Where? “At this facility, Sir.”: I pointed out that I wasn’t likely to ever to be able to redeem that voucher at Heathrow Airport. “Well sorry, Sir. You’ll need to talk to head office. We started this during Covid.”
OK… so you can see how they had a problem early on in the lockdown. Somebody books a car, then phones up to say oh sorry, there’s this lockdown thing and now I have to stay home. And they want their money back.
I protested that Covid was 3 years ago. “Sorry, Sir. The policy was enacted then and is still in place and I’m just doing my job here.”
So, I said, the company has retained a policy of giving vouchers that are unlikely to ever be redeemed rather than just a straighforward refund. That must be a nice little earner.
“I wouldn’t put it like that, Sir. Tell you what, I’m not really supposed to do this, but I can give you GPS in that car.”
But I’d already booked and paid for GPS.
“I’ll turn it on for you, Sir.”
(nou gaan die manne worry)
