It's one of the paradoxes of water that increased rainfall doesn't automatically equate to more fresh drinking water. Intense rainfall tends to cause surface flooding rather than draining down into our underground reservoirs, where it can be stored. Heavy rainfall also creates a scenario where the surface water ‘runs-off' carrying pollutants from land which then drains into our rivers and lakes. This type of water pollution happens naturally and is intensified during storms and floods.

As the climate changes and our demand for fresh drinking water continues to rise, we need to think about how we consume and conserve water both in the home and at work.

Most of us enjoy a cool, glass of chilled bottled water from the fridge and don't even think about it. Many of us have turned our backs on tap water, too, and have taken to carrying bottled water around or taking it to work instead. What are the implications of this? Well, we can drink water on the move, whenever we want to, as we go about our life and work, which is highly convenient, but the downside is the damage we are causing to the environment.

Millions of tonnes of plastic bottles are discarded and sit for hundreds of years on landfill, as plastic doesn't easily bio-degrade. The other disadvantage of plastic water bottles is the large carbon footprint required to transport them by air and freight. In New York, the environmental shift away from bottled water encouraged city officials to spend vast sums of money on a campaign (Bottle Free in the Big Apple). to encourage New Yorkers to use tap water instead of bottled water even in bars and restaurants.

So if you're a business with a responsibility to employees, customers and the environment, what do you do - encourage them to use the tap? What about considerations like accessibility and taste? Even without crises, people will still continue to buy bottled water because they prefer it to tap water, so it's partly about choice.

Although the tap option may appear more environmentally friendly, the story's not so straightforward there either: tap water needs to be treated to make it safe to drink and this chlorination process can cause some people to react badly to the chemicals in tap water. In addition, many of the drainage systems are leaky and in dire need of repair. Recent estimates state that England and Wales lose more than three and a half BILLION litres of water a day - in leakages.* To put this in perspective, Thames Water loses 915 million litres a day (Ofwat) this is enough to fill 366 Olympic-sized swimming pools! Many of the water companies are facing an uphill struggle with supply; which should serve as a warning to all of us, especially if we continue to be battered by flash floods.

The mains water industry is energy intensive and consumes about 3 per cent of total energy used in the UK. Most of this is used to pump water and wastewater and to run treatment plants to ensure the water meets strict environmental and health quality standards. In my view, the water utility companies need to involve everyone, including central and local government, regulators and stakeholders in the process of coordinating a consistent and effective approach to managing our water supply. The changing weather, leaking pipes and rising demand for drinking water affects us all.

Climate change and the need to reduce our carbon footprints are factors which are, as we are seeing, driving the popularity of water coolers. Drinking natural spring water from coolers is a viable alternative to both tap and bottled water - there is a third way! In an ideal world, we would all drink water extracted locally and delivered locally from recyclable containers. Natural water from coolers provides a clean and fresh taste and can be used to fill our own containers when we are on the move.

Water (for Work and Home) will become carbon neutral in 2008 via a United Nations ratified carbon-offset programme. But it doesn't end there; we will be working to a five-year carbon reduction plan to reduce our need to offset in the long term.

However, we may choose to drink it, the facts are irrefutable: water supply and demand are increasingly out of sync and everyone needs to think hard about where and how they are sourcing their water.

Water is a vital resource, we all need it to live, and we need to start thinking about water consumption as a ‘life skill'.

At Water (for Work and Home), we appreciate that water is a very precious resource. In 2025, two out of three people will live in a water-stressed area. We owe it to ourselves and our environment to drink water responsibly, perhaps more of us should explore the third way.

Water (for Work and Home) is a family business supplying water coolers to businesses and for home use making it possible to drink cool, pure water without damaging the environment. Water in Water (for Work and Home)'s coolers comes from its own protected source of natural water at Hadlow, in Kent. The water is bottled without energy intensive processing in a returnable, recyclable polycarbonate container. At the end of its life, the bottle is chipped and recycled.

http://www.waterforwork.co.uk/

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