Save water | South West Water

Have you ever thought about how much water you use?

Safe drinking water is probably one of the easiest things to take for granted so it's sometimes hard to see why saving it is so urgent and important.

Climate change, population growth and people's choices in their water use, are putting our resources under strain. Your ordinary steps to save every drop do make an extraordinary difference to how much water remains available in the South West.

Our top tips for saving water at home

With so much depending on it, it only makes sense to save every drop. If you answer a few questions below, we'll give you some handy tips and tricks that will keep you as water-efficient as a cactus.

Where would you like to save water?

Why save water

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The 1%

With most of our planet being blue, you wouldn’t be alone in thinking we’ll never run out of water. The thing is, not all that water is drinkable. In fact, only 1% of it is accessible freshwater. And we need to protect it.

Picture of an otter with it's paws together saying please

Why save water

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For all things bright and beautiful

Whether it’s us, the fish that live in it, the cows that drink it, the otters that play in it, the bugs that skate on it, or the birds who bathe it in – life depends on water. And all creatures, great and small, rely on the same 1%. The more tap water you use, the less is left in the environment for them.

Why save water

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For you and your family

Another reason to save water is that all aspects of human life depend on it. You drink it. It’s used to make your food, your clothes, your house, your medicine. Things we take for granted like swimming pools and restaurants couldn’t run without it. Neither could our emergency services.

How we’re protecting our water resources

As well as giving you resources and encouraging you to join in our campaign to save every drop, we’re busy finding ways we can save water too. To help protect our water resources we are:

Expanding our local teams to find and fix leaks as quickly as possible
Bringing new water resources online
Monitoring our reservours in areas where there is a risk of demand for water exceeding supply
Upgrading treatment works and in some areas installing new ones to increase the capacity of our network so we can meet demand more efficiently.

Improvements we've made between 2022 and 2023

During the hosepipe ban, we were busy increasing the resilience of our water network to help better secure our water resources for the future. These are just some of the improvements we made during that time.

1new reservoir

at Hawk's Tor

c.25%

more storage in Cornwall

c.12%

more storage in Devon

22,000

leaks fixed

Don’t just stop at home – take your knowledge to work too! image

Have you ever thought about how much water you use?