Making water efficiency a lasting priority

Sustaining water efficiency between droughts remains a challenge for Australia’s water sector. For The Water Conservancy CEO and AWA Water Efficiency Specialist Network member Chris Philpot, building on past achievements means maintaining investment, capability, and customer engagement through wet and dry conditions alike.

Australia’s response to the Millennium Drought demonstrated what coordinated effort could achieve, Philpot said, with advances in regulation, product efficiency, and community engagement supported by skilled utility teams and substantial budgets.

But maintaining that momentum has proved more difficult.

“I know it's been said before, but it seems like as soon as we're in a drought, we get a lot done. There's a lot of focus on the need to use water wisely, and the budgets are massive during drought," he said.

"And then, as soon as it rains, it all gets put to the side.”

For Philpot, the opportunity is to make water efficiency an enduring part of how the sector plans and operates.

“Water efficiency can't just be something we just do during drought, because when you look back at the way we've responded, it really hinders the story, the water efficiency story, if we don't maintain these practices when it's raining.”

Building on past progress

Philpot said Australia’s achievements provide a strong starting point, but interruptions to investment and activity have consequences for sector capability.

“We've lost a bit of skill, and we've lost a bit of knowledge within the industry that we had during the Millennium Drought,” he said.

“Australia should be proud of its water efficiency legacy. When you look around the world, we've achieved so much. But we could have achieved so much more if our efforts weren't stop-start because of how we approach droughts and floods.”

He pointed to product rebate programs and government water efficiency teams as examples of continued activity, while identifying opportunities for greater consistency across the country.

“There's definitely pockets of excellence, but it's not a consistent national approach,” he said.

Making water use visible

At the household level, Philpot sees water literacy and awareness of everyday consumption as barriers to sustained change. That requires keeping the benefits visible and giving customers practical ways to act on that understanding.

“One of the big areas that The Water Conservancy focuses on is the fact that water is very much taken for granted. We use it on autopilot. Our work is about building awareness of when we're using water and how we're using water," he said.

Smart metering offers an opportunity to make that information more accessible and useful to customers.

“Smart metering is a fantastic, really exciting opportunity to help customers better understand their water use. And utilities are all at different implementation stages with that,” Philpot said.

“I think it's about making that easy, about making that communication easy to understand. And smart metering does that.”

The practical value lies in giving customers timely feedback they can connect with their own routines, Philpot said.

“Those apps where you can get that info on your phone, and it shows you instantly, as soon as you come out of your shower. It gives you a prompt that you've had a longer shower than usual," he said.

Connecting water use with energy consumption could also strengthen engagement, particularly where reducing hot water use offers households a clearer financial incentive.

“There's an opportunity to connect water use to carbon and energy as well, particularly with hot water and showering,” he said.

Connecting across sectors

Sustaining progress also requires involvement beyond utilities, Philpot said. That thinking informed The Water Conservancy’s development of Smart Water Connect, following momentum from the IWA's Efficient 2025, hosted by AWA in Melbourne last year.

Philpot said Smart Water Connect was designed to bring together utilities, government, product manufacturers, and organisations working in irrigation.

“And we really believe that all those sectors need to come together to make water efficiency happen, not just the water sector," he said.

The inaugural event brought together 106 delegates across eight sessions featuring 29 speakers. Discussions covered customer engagement, rebates and incentives, efficient products, drought resilience, regulation, non-residential water use, smart technologies and data-driven decision-making.

“What stood out at the inaugural Smart Water Connect was the strong sense of momentum and shared purpose across the water-efficiency community,” Philpot said.

That momentum came with a familiar challenge: sustaining effort when drought conditions ease.

“Delegates highlighted the importance of maintaining capability, investment and customer engagement between droughts, while embedding water efficiency as a core component of long-term water security planning," Philpot said.

Discussions also examined how technology could support changes in everyday water use, with practical customer engagement remaining central.

“Whether discussing smart metering, data analytics or product efficiency, speakers emphasised the importance of turning information into practical actions that are easy for customers, businesses and communities to understand and adopt,” he said.

For Philpot, bringing different sectors together helped identify the shared commitments needed to sustain progress.

“The clear message emerging from Smart Water Connect was that lasting progress will require stronger collaboration across utilities, government and industry, greater national coordination, and a sustained commitment to water efficiency as a mainstream water security strategy, not simply a response to drought," he said.

Putting efficiency on the table

For Philpot, a central priority is ensuring demand management receives serious consideration alongside investment in new water supplies.

“Water efficiency should be one of the options on the table, and it should be taken just as seriously as spending billions of dollars to build a new desal plant. Why not spend allocate some of the funding available to help people save water?” he said.

“We know that, financially, those figures add up and that it makes sense. It just needs to be considered as important as new supply options. And maybe that takes different policy.

“Maybe that takes different regulatory incentives, different funding mechanisms. Maybe there's a whole different structure that needs to be set up to enable that kind of approach to happen.”

Alongside those structural considerations, Philpot sees ongoing education and customer engagement as essential to helping households and businesses understand their consumption and build a stronger water efficiency culture.

“And things like better school education and improvements in how they're learning water in the syllabus, and better ongoing customer engagement," he said.

Interested in learning more about AWA's Water Efficiency Specialist Network? Take a look here.