Water Wise

The hospitality industry is leveraging a whole new host of new-age technologies to conserve the ‘elixir of life’ and also bolster their savings in the bargain

- Bindu Gopal Rao

Try this for some number-crunching – the Sofitel Mumbai BKC managed to bring down its water consumption by 45%, from 30,500 kiloliters in January-April 2016 to 16,556 kiloliters in January-April 2017. That is almost half its water use in one year! And it is one of the many hotels and restaurants in the country that are working out ways to reduce and reuse water on their properties.

To conserve water the first thing companies need to do is identify sources that use it in the maximum quantity. In a hotel, the laundry, swimming pool, cooling towers, kitchen, rooms and landscape areas consume the largest amounts of water. A few large, kitchen and F&B equipments like bain-marie, coffee machines, boilers and dishwashers too use large amounts of water. Similarly, in restaurants, the dish wash and pot wash areas are high water usage areas.

The awareness about water conservancy has seen companies seek out options to store and reuse this resource better. Talking about the steps his company has undertaken, Pankaj Gupta, co-founder of Flavour Pot Foods LLP Hospitality says, “For the dish wash process, we follow a three-sink wash method where running water is not used since it causes major losses. In the front and back restroom areas the flush tank push levers are designed to only release one fourth of a tank at a time, which ensures minimal yet optimum amount of water required for hygiene. Men's urinals do not have sensors but manual tap levers to curtail default flushes that cause wastage.”