Water

The University works to provide free access to safe water whilst also minimising usage.

 

 

Free Drinking Water

Durham University joined the nationwide 'Refill' campaign in the spring of 2018. This aims to connect people to food, drink and shopping without the need for single use packaging.  

 

The University provides free drinking water to staff, students and visitors across all of its public cafes as well as mains water stations at many other sites. 

 

As part of the Refill scheme, University cafes also all offer drinks in reusable cups without the 25 pence levy now applied to hot drinks purchased in disposable cups. More information, about our wider work on sustainable food is available within our Sustainable Food Policy. 

 

 

Shower Timers

As a means of conserving water, the University Greenspace team have provided Colleges with 4-minute shower timers to encourage students to save water by taking shorter showers. 

The idea for this initiative came from Josephine Butler College, who originally trialled the shower timers and had very positive feedback. 

 

 

Water Awareness

We run an annual water awareness campaign which aim to highlight and eliminate water wastage. 

Our Greenspace Calendar highlights key moments where the team works on water. They plan communications and initiatives during events such as World Water Day in March, our annual ‘April Showers’ campaign, Waterwises’s Water Saving Week in May, and ‘World Refill Day’ on 16th June. 

 

 

Aquatic Stewardship  

Durham University’s Biodiversity Strategy notes that the increased biodiversity we are striving towards will “offer higher levels of ecosystem services such as water filtration, flood prevention and nutrient cycling”. Our biodiversity baselining of amphibians and reptiles gives data on the water quality of our Estate and the wider area. In order to support and grow populations of species including Common Frog, Common Toad and Smooth/Palmate Newts, we are creating new ponds and mini wetlands on our Estate. 

One of the principles within our strategy is to “Work to enhance soil management across the Estate (e.g. establish compost heaps to recycle suitable green waste) and to minimise detrimental run-off into waterways” – see page 11. 

As part our work on Biodiversity, we value the contribution that the Wear Rivers Trust makes as part of our Biodiversity Sub-Group. 

 

 

Community Engagement

Durham University works in partnership with other local organisations to care for our local water- both in terms of water conservation with initiatives such as 'Refill'. The University signed up to Durham City’s Single Use Plastic pledge Sign up to our single use plastics pledge via Duram County Council – this also promotes the Refill mobile app for city-wide water stations.  

We also work in partnership on issues such as monitoring the health of our local aquatic ecosystems and playing our part in delivering good aquatic stewardship practices. 

Durham University is proud to be part of The Wear Catchment Partnership alongside others including the Wear Rivers Trust, two neighbouring local authorities, Durham Wildlife Trust, the Woodland Trust, the Environment Agency, Northumbria Water and Groundwork North East. The partnership strives to preserve and enhance the benefits provided by our river and its wider catchment. These include plentiful, clean water; high quality connected habitats supporting diverse and abundant wildlife; tranquil green and blue spaces for recreation and wellbeing; or natural carbon capture and protection from flooding. 

The Water Hub is a collaborative initiative between Durham University, Durham County Council, the Environment Agency and Northumbrian Water. It aims to engage with Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the North East of England to identify and develop innovative, practical solutions to challenges in the whole region’s water sector through challenge events, partnership working, flexible small grants and access to test facilities.

Durham University’s world-leading research also contributes to acquatic ecosystem health globally, for example through the Geography Department’s  Catchments and Rivers Cluster which monitors and models the interactions and feedbacks between geomorphology, hydrology, vegetation, and water chemistry in hillslope and river systems and Professor Kostas Nikolopoulos’s work on Ocean Radioactivity and its global impact. For wider examples of research which is contributing to Environmental Sustainablity, read our ‘Protecting our planet: How Durham University's research helps to safeguard the environment’ which includes our project on ‘Improving Water Sustainability and Flood Resilience’ in partnership with the Environment Agency (page 5). 

 

 

Research

Durham University’s world-leading research also contributes to aquatic ecosystem health globally, for example through the Geography Department’s  Catchments and Rivers Cluster which monitors and models the interactions and feedbacks between geomorphology, hydrology, vegetation, and water chemistry in hillslope and river systems and Professor Kostas Nikolopoulos’s work on Ocean Radioactivity and its global impact. For wider examples of research which is contributing to Environmental Sustainablity, read our ‘Protecting our planet: How Durham University's research helps to safeguard the environment’ which includes our project on ‘Improving Water Sustainability and Flood Resilience’ in partnership with the Environment Agency (page 5). 

 

 

Refurbishment and new buildings 

As we refurbish our estate, and build new buildings, we are taking water into account.  An example of a project that has recently been completed is at one of our colleges, Van Mildert, where we have replaced showers with new heads that minimise maintenance and cleaning regimes, as well as the flow rate of water. Going forward we will take lessons learnt from this replacement to use elsewhere. 

For new buildings, we are committed to minimising our water consumption and set challenging reduction targets through our Sustainable Construction and Renovation Policy. 

 

 

Measuring water consumption 

Durham University measures water consumption using automatic meter readings that gives us half hourly data. This allows us to identify excessive water use or leaks and action repairs as quickly as possible. We partner with our Water supplier, Wave, and our meter provider, Technology, to perform automatic meter reading. 

This gives us information on water use that we can review to identify areas for water conservation, using our water meter portal, such as in the image below showing our Teaching and Learning Centre. 

We report on our annual water consumption to HESA as part of our Estates Management Record. 

 

 

Annual water use 

Our water use for the last 3 financial years is listed below. 

	2021-22	2022-23	2023-24
Water (m3)	356,219	387,765	382,539

 

 

Preventing water system pollution  

As part of our environmental management system, we carry out a policy that minimises risks of any discharge to our wastewater. This policy is documented here. We work to minimise damaging discharges to water.  

 

 

Water reuse and water-conscious planting 

We have several rainwater harvesting systems which operate in buildings across our estate. This means we minimise the mains water that is used in our toilets within buildings. For example, at the Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics we meter the water provided from rainwater to the building, in the last year the site reused 31 cubic meters of rain water. Our metered data at this site can be seen below. 

We also have a range of Sustainable Drainage Systems that capture rainwater around our estate. 

We use rainwater as part of our planting and watering around the University. This includes projects like our mini-wetlands around which use rainwater with native plants to enhance biodiversity across the University Estate. 

We are moving to increasingly planting native species mixes for landscaping and amenity planting which, by their very nature, require no watering. Across our estate, we are also using drought t-tolerant borders on exposed sites, for example our Mediterranean border to the South of our Biosciences building. 

 

 

Water extraction 

We extract a small amount of water from a borehole to support the maintenance of our sports pitches at the Graham Sports and Wellbeing park. This borehole is under abstraction licence from the Environment Agency. We monitor water use at this borehole with Automatic Meter Reading that gives half hourly data. Excess values provide alarms that ensure we are not wasting water from the extraction.