A wee help for schools

When water is flushed down the toilet, so are dollars. Rebecca Lewis reports on why money woes start in the bathroom for Waitakere schools
When nature calls, students at Laingholm School needn't worry - their bathroom business is a cheap one. The installation of waterless and movement sensor urinals are saving water and money from being flushed away. EcoMatters Environment Trust and Waitakere City Council are more than halfway through an in-depth audit of water usage across all 73 west Auckland schools. The Water Wise-Up scheme aims to reduce Waitakere's total water use by a quarter. The trust installed the new urinals as a trial at Laingholm School and has had very positive results. "The urinals are working tremendously well," says associate principal Heather Walsh. "The kids are keeping recordings of how much water we are using compared to last year, and they have found there is a significant difference." Before the council installed the school's new urinals, it had eight poorly designed, wasteful units. Mrs Walsh thinks the project will help Waitakere's water use dramatically. "We actually did our own audit within the school last year and we knew that we were using far too much water," she says. "Then the opportunity came up for the council to audit us and they offered the trial urinals to us, so we couldn't say no." Jacob Rawls, project manager, says a 10-litre urinal cistern flushes every 15 minutes - about 96 times a day - over one year using up to 350,000 litres of water. This can cost a school more than $500. A school with 500 students may spend up to $17,000 every year on water bills. While reducing the flow is hard work, Mr Rawls says most schools need to replace urinals. "Urinals are the biggest culprit," he says. "We have made a list in ranking order of the 45 schools we have already audited and the highest school on that list uses 2.2 million litres of water per year. "The top 30 on our list, added together, use 22 million litres per year, and that's just on urinals. When you add everything else the number is much, much higher." Mr Rawls says the project aims to teach children how to save water in everyday activities. "We talk to schools and kids about everything that can use water: urinals, toilets, swimming pools, drinking fountains, showers, outdoor usage and even the photography departments. But the way the kids wash their paintbrushes isn't necessarily going to have a big effect. The biggest culprit is actually urinals, and we are focusing on that."