With supplies looking precarious and government campaigns launching to encourage us to think about consumption, the Britons are rightly asking who’s actually responsible for what’s going down the drain.
The UK water sector is no stranger to regulation. From leakage targets to infrastructure investment cycles, utilities operate within one of the most tightly governed frameworks in the country. Yet despite this, water demand continues to strain resources, particularly in the South and East, raising the question: are we regulating the right things?
Because while policy can mandate pipe repairs, reservoir expansion and metering rollouts, it cannot directly control what happens at the point of use. And that’s where a significant portion of water waste occurs.
For decades, the dominant narrative in water management has centred on supply-side solutions. Fix the leaks, build new reservoirs and improve distribution efficiency. These are essential, but they are also slow, capital-intensive and constrained by environmental and planning challenges.
Meanwhile, demand-side measures – particularly those focused on human behaviour – have remained underdeveloped.
The UK picture
In the UK, the average person uses around 139 litres of water a day, more than in many other European countries, and hovers at levels that we cannot sustain. Yet much of this usage is driven not by necessity, but by habit – long showers and a lack of real-time feedback. The issue is not that people are unwilling to save water. It is that water use is hidden, difficult to measure and historically the technology has not been widely available to value and support its use.
If behaviour is a critical driver of water consumption, then regulation must evolve to reflect that reality. The UK now needs frameworks that integrate behavioural design into water efficiency strategies. The urgency of water scarcity is increasing. Climate pressures, population growth and ageing infrastructure are converging to create a more volatile supply and demand balance. Large-scale infrastructure projects will remain essential, but they are not a quick fix.
Behavioural change, by contrast, can deliver results in a few months. It is not a silver bullet. But it is one of the fastest, most cost-effective levers available to the sector today. In the bathroom, one of the biggest culprits of water waste stems from long showers, with over 2 billion litres going down our drains every day.
While individual actions vary, patterns of behaviour are remarkably consistent. People respond to convenience and follow cues in their environment. The problem is that many water systems ignore these patterns. They are engineered for technical optimisation, not behavioural alignment.
For example, a low-flow showerhead may reduce the rate of water use, but if it leads to longer shower durations to compensate, the intended savings are lost. Similarly, the absence of any feedback or time awareness in a shower environment encourages overuse, simply because there is no natural signal to stop.
The behavioural blind spot
Utilities and facilities managers have made progress in awareness campaigns, but awareness alone rarely translates into ongoing behavioural change. The sustainable long-term approach is to use less, waste less and value more. Changing behaviour isn’t easy – but with the right tools, informed policies and a willingness to make different choices, it is the most powerful option.
In a study, technology trialled by researchers at the University of Surrey involving 17,500 hotel showers in the UK, Denmark and Spain, shower lengths were reduced by up to 26% – the equivalent to around 10 litres of (hot) water per shower. Researchers explored a behaviour change technique known as continuous, real-time eco-feedback, feeding instantaneous information back to a user with the purpose of reducing their environmental impact.
The research could lead to better strategies for tackling water use in the tourism industry, where people can use up to 250 more litres of water per day than at home. Behavioural science has repeatedly shown that habits are shaped less by information and more by environment, cues and friction. If a behaviour is easy, intuitive and reinforced, it sticks. If it requires constant conscious effort, it doesn’t.
Studies show that for behaviour change interventions to be effective, ‘nudges’, (for reducing single-use plastics, for example), and reminding people to bring reusable bags when they go shopping, are a useful tool – along with policymakers ensuring that people have access to plastic-free options.
This is where the sector faces a critical blind spot. We have engineered highly sophisticated supply systems, but we have not applied the same rigour to designing for user behaviour at the point of use. In commercial and residential settings alike, water consumption is still largely invisible. There is no immediate feedback loop, no clear boundary and no built-in prompt to moderate use. In that context, the resulting waste is not surprising.
Shared responsibility calls for shared design
The conversation around water waste often falls into two camps – either it’s the responsibility of utilities and policymakers, or it’s down to individual users. In reality, it is both and neither can succeed in isolation.
Policymakers can set targets and frameworks, but without mechanisms that influence behaviour, those targets become difficult to achieve. End users control consumption, but without supportive systems, expecting consistent water reduction is unrealistic. For responsibility to be translated into action, better design also needs to be added into the equation.
For utilities and facilities managers, this means moving beyond traditional interventions and considering how the built environment itself can guide behaviour. In the same way that energy efficiency has benefited from smart defaults and intuitive controls, water efficiency needs its own suite of behavioural tools.
The opportunity in facilities and managed environments
Facilities managers, housing providers and hospitality operators are uniquely positioned to bridge this gap. Unlike utility companies, they have direct influence over the environments where water is used and the conditions that shape behaviour.
This is particularly relevant in high-use areas such as bathrooms and washrooms, where small changes can deliver significant impact.
Showers, for example, represent one of the most significant points of water and energy use in buildings. Yet they are also one of the least managed. Once installed, they operate with minimal intervention, regardless of how they are used.
Introducing simple cues – whether through visual or behavioural prompts, timing mechanisms, or user feedback – can shift usage patterns without compromising comfort or requiring major capital investment. In a UK pilot study which launched in 2025, smart-technology using behavioural prompts in hotel showers area have reduced water use by over half, without ever needing user motivation.
Rethinking regulation
If behaviour is a critical driver of water consumption, then regulation must evolve to reflect that reality.
This does not mean attempting to police individual actions. It means creating frameworks that encourage the integration of behavioural design into water efficiency strategies. For example, government building standards and retrofit programmes could place greater emphasis on point-of-use interventions rather than the current policy of relying on low-flow taps and showers. And procurement guidelines in public housing and commercial developments could prioritise solutions that demonstrably influence user behaviour.
In other words, regulation should not just focus on what outcomes are achieved, but on how those outcomes are enabled.
Designing for reality
Ultimately, the question is not whether people should use less water. It is whether the systems around them make that easy to do. The World Economic Forum has already warned that without a circular approach to water – reuse, efficiency and more system-wide planning – digital growth could be hindered by physical limits.
If we continue to design environments that assume perfect behaviour, we will continue to fall short of our water efficiency goals. But if we design for how people actually behave – imperfectly and habitually – we can unlock significant savings without relying on constant vigilance.
Water security will not be achieved by regulation alone, nor by individual responsibility in isolation. It will be achieved by aligning the two through better design. Because in the end, the most effective way to control water waste is not to tell people what to do. It’s to make the better choice the easier one.
By Steve Harding, Founder and CEO of clean tech water conservation specialist, Showerkap.
Image: Timothy L Brock / Unsplash