The rich and the affluent in the city are using four times the quantity of water used by the average household. While an average house in Bengaluru consumes 85 litres per person per day, the ‘top 10 percentile households’ i.e., the affluent ones, of the total 1,495 households surveyed, make use of 340 litres per person per day.
Overall, the city consumes about 1,000 million litres of water every day, and Bengaluru can save 100 million litres if this top 10% reduces consumption by 30%, showed research by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). On Tuesday, the team released the findings of its new study ‘2035 Vision for Water and Wastewater in Bengaluru’.
Why they use more
The excess water goes into gardening, washing cars and their premises, the researchers found.
According to the researchers, by ‘top 10’, they mean the ‘wealthiest households which are not price-sensitive’, due to which increasing the price per unit will not reduce their usage. The only way to encourage them to reduce their usage is to create awareness and sensitise them towards water issues, the researchers said.
‘Only 20% use rainwater’
Further, the study has found that only 20% of the overall households surveyed used rainwater. However, the few households that are making use of rainwater reported a much lower dependence on piped water use, at 18 litres per capita per day (LPCD) less than the average of 123 LPCD. “This suggests that rainwater harvesting remains an untapped resource and has potential to reduce Bengaluru’s water needs,” the study pointed out.
