Sections:
Freedom of Information Act 2000, request no.
F2008/132
Date of release: 26 June 2008
Water use in UK offices
1. How many toilets do you have in your office building(s)?
2. What capacity are the cisterns and if they're on automatic flushes how often do they flush?
3. If you can calculate the number of litres of water that were flushed during 2007-08.
DFID has two offices in the UK, one in London and the other in East Kilbride near Glasgow. Between these offices we have a total of 201 toilets. Our East Kilbride office now has dual flush toilets, with 3 or 6 litre flushes. We are about to switch to dual flush in our London office where we currently have standard 6 litre flush cisterns. All our urinals are now waterless and there are no automatic flushes in place at either location.
As the water used to flush toilets is not metered separately, we are unable to calculate the volume used. However, since we installed waterless urinals (at the beginning of 2008) and dual flush toilets, the total water consumption for the two buildings has reduced from around 1500 cubic metres a month to around 700 cubic meters a month.
You might also be interested in the ‘Making DFID Greener’ section in our
latest Annual Report. Please see 10.44 to 10.46 on
this web link.