How Can Care Homes Save Water and Reduce Costs?

We’ve talked in recent blogs about some of the commercial challenges facing care homes right now, like the relatively high cost of energy. There’s another utility that care home providers can’t operate without and which – like energy – accounts for significant expenditure and deserves reviewing: water supply. Luckily for you, just like energy again, water costs are surprisingly easy to reduce, if you know how!

Simple tips for saving water

1. Monitor your usage

The first way to save money is to understand your water consumption and identify ways of using less.

2. Introduce small changes to daily habits

Think about some of the everyday activities happening on your premises, and how to make even small reductions in the water they use. You could educate your staff about running slightly shallower baths, encouraging shorter showers, or watering the grounds for a minute or two less.

3. Capture rainwater

If your care home has a flat or pitched roof, you could install water butts to collect the rain, potentially saving up to 2,400 litres every year. In the grounds, add layers of leaves or bark to help retain moisture.

4. Consider installing water-saving technologies

Installing things like push taps, flush savers and water-efficient showerheads can make a significant difference to your overall usage, especially in settings with lots of facilities and bathrooms.

5. Check your plumbing

Smart meters are a great way to monitor your water usage, but they can also help reveal leaks in your system, helping to reduce waste. It’s a good idea to check outdoor appliances like hoses and sprinklers too. Even a simple dripping tap wastes an average of 5,500 litres of water each year.

6. Think about switching supplier

While water rates increase year on year, lots of care home providers don’t realise that it’s perfectly possible to shop around and switch supplier. Of those who do realise, many might not have the time it takes to research the market and find better deals. Incredibly, 75% of UK businesses have stayed with the default supplier they were using before deregulation! That’s quite a staggering figure, especially when you consider the water industry’s reputation for charging customers incorrectly. By switching to a fixed business water tariff from a different supplier, businesses can typically reduce their water costs by up to 10-15% in England, or as much as 30-40% in Scotland.

Help is at hand

You might have already seen that, as part of our Go Green initiative, we’ve teamed up with World Kinect Energy Services – a trusted name in energy and utility solutions. One of the services World Kinect offers is Water Management Services. The specialists at World Kinect can perform the following essential functions to help your business save money:

Usage overview

The team will closely examine how your business uses water and identify ways to reduce consumption.

Data management

Using specialist online technology, the team can help with monitoring water usage to help lower your bills by making more efficient use of water.

Bill validation and reclaim

Experts will scrutinise your previous water bills, identifying any errors and helping you reclaim money owed to you.

Market comparison

Experts can check and compare the products and prices offered by different suppliers, saving you considerable time and hassle and helping you identify the companies worth switching to.

Switching and procurement

If the admin side of switching suppliers has put you off doing it, don’t worry – World Kinect’s team can sort this out for you.

Water reduction advice

Using technology like smart meters, World Kinect’s team can assess the way your business uses water and recommend ways to reduce consumption.  There are positive knock-on effects off this too. With 20% of household gas bills typically attributed to heating up water, reducing your everyday usage of hot water will have a significant impact on your energy bills.

The World Kinect advantage

With more than three decades of experience in the utility sector, World Kinect has all the expertise and resources you’d expect from a business with a glowing reputation like it has. As well as the insight, contacts and bargaining power it takes to secure great deals, its water team knows this sector inside out, meaning you can count on its people to help save you time and money, as well as minimise risk. In fact, by securing your water audits through us, you will receive them at 10% below market rate.

In other words, we think World Kinect is a trustworthy partner that’ll always act in your best interest. That’s why we’re happy to work together.

A partner we trust

If you haven’t switched water suppliers for a while, or you think that your water provision could be a place to make savings, World Kinect is the name we recommend as a starting point. Every bit as committed to efficiency, excellence and environmental sustainability as we are ourselves, we think it’s another respected business with the interests of yours at its heart.

Ready to start saving?

Request your free, no-obligation call-back today. 

A World Kinect water specialist will be in touch.