Water and Effluents
Since 2019, our dedication to environmental responsibility has remained steadfast. Through diligent monitoring of our water usage, we have strived to understand and mitigate our environmental impact. As part of our thorough environmental audit, we have partnered with Julie's Bicycle to track our water usage, facilitating easy comparison over the years.
Our efforts have delivered significant results in reducing water consumption. In 2019, our total water usage amounted to 876 m3 resulting in 461kg of CO2e emissions. Through effective management and conservation measures, we have successfully reduced our carbon footprint to 86kg of CO2e in 2022.
As we are using the garden as a community growing space, we have installed additional water butts to reduce use of mains water for the plants.
We actively explored the option of implementing a rainwater harvesting system but did not pursue this option in the end. The aim was to stop using drinking water for flushing the toilets and watering the garden. The reasons we did not progress this scheme were the fact that previous schemes had been deinstalled elsewhere in the county, potential legionella risks and Judith Thornton’s academic research: Rainwater harvesting systems for toilet flushing – do they ever make environmental sense? – A collection of thoughts about a low carbon future
