How to save water at your events

Water is one of Earth’s most precious natural resources, and managing how we use it better is good for both people and the planet.

Despite being used at events in many ways, from F&B to cleaning and sanitation, water usage can often be overlooked when it comes to event sustainability efforts. With the focus heavily on reducing the carbon impact of events (and quite rightly so), this is an area that deserves more attention.

But 2.2 billion people around the world still lack safely managed drinking water, according to the United Nations, which estimates that the demand for freshwater will exceed supply by 40% by 2030. Access to safe and clean drinking water is a basic human right, and event planners have an opportunity and a responsibility to manage it more mindfully.

That might include checking your venue’s water conversation policies, rethinking menu choices to options that use less water when they are produced, and not prefilling water glasses or using ice buckets.

Choose responsible venues

Make sure you use a hotel or venue that implements water saving measures, such as a rainwater harvesting system, greywater re-use system, motion sensor taps in the bathrooms that automatically switch off when not in use, and a linen and towel re-use system.

Ask your host property to share what initiatives they have in place and how they can help you reduce water usage during your event. It’s better to ask these questions upfront at the initial enquiry stage rather than further down the line when it might be too late to make changes. Water saving should be a key part of your overall event sustainability strategy and considered at every stage of the planning process, not as an afterthought.

We are committed to ensuring that water use is equitable throughout the communities in which we operate. Our water stewardship efforts include limiting the use of water through technological improvements in our rooms and operations, as well as using rainwater and wastewater from showers and bathtubs, known as greywater, wherever possible.

That means when you book an event at one of our properties, you can rest assured we will be making every effort to conserve water, particularly in areas where water consumption is high. For example, the Park Inn Hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica has a Greyter Water System that collects and treats water from the hotel’s showers and bathtubs so that it can be reused for flushing toilets, irrigating the rooftop garden and for cleaning the solar hot water collectors.

Monitor water consumption at your events

Don’t forget to measure and monitor your water consumption at every event. Ask your venue to help you do this, so you can track how successful your efforts are – and gain insights into what you can do better next time.

Together with other members of the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, we have developed a methodology to measure and report water consumption in a consistent manner across the whole hotel industry.

The Hotel Water Measurement Initiative (HWMI) methodology enables every hotel to measure and report on the water footprint of any individual hotel stay, a meeting or event. This can in turn help you to understand how making small changes when planning your events can reduce overall water usage.

For example, you could select a lunch or dinner menu that does not require much water for its preparation – think grill and bake instead of steam, boil and blanch. If you have coffee breaks planned, keep accurate measurements of what is discarded at your coffee stations – this information will become invaluable when planning the event next year.

Get your attendees involved in saving water

And finally, get event attendees on board with saving water by communicating what they can do to help, why it’s so important, and the benefits for the planet.

For example, you can provide drinking fountains and ask attendees not to buy or bring bottled water – it can take twice as much water to produce a plastic water bottle as the amount of water contained in the bottle!

If attendees are staying overnight, encourage them to take water conservation personally by taking shorter showers and reusing towels. The simple act of reusing towels can make a huge difference at our properties, thanks to our partnership with Just a Drop – a respected international water aid that works to bring safe drinking water to water stressed communities.

Just a Drop receives funds from RHG’s Towel Reuse program: every time a guest chooses to reuse their towel for a second night, participating hotels donate to support projects such as digging wells, installing pumps and implementing sanitation.

Each towel reused also saves approximately 15 litres of water. The total saving is a whopping 84 Olympic swimming pools of water since the start of the program, and over 28,500 people across Just a Drop projects in Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Nicaragua, Peru and India now have access to safe drinking water and sanitation thanks to this initiative.