Clean water starts before the pipe.
The UK Government’s new Clean Water Bill is a welcome step towards fixing a water system that clearly needs change.
Announced in the King’s Speech in May, the Bill promises stronger regulation, greater accountability and significant reform of the way Britain manages its water. But one part of the Government’s proposal particularly caught my attention: its support for “pre-pipe solutions” and the ambition to ensure that “pollution is tackled at source.”
I think that is exactly where we need to go.
For too long, we have thought about water pollution primarily as something the water industry has to deal with once it reaches the sewer or wastewater treatment plant. Of course we need better infrastructure, better treatment and stronger regulation. The Government has already committed £104 billion of private investment to water infrastructure between 2025 and 2030.
But there is another side to the equation: how much pollution can we stop entering the system in the first place?
That responsibility cannot sit with water companies alone. Manufacturers, retailers, construction businesses, agriculture, tradespeople and consumers all have a role to play.The Government’s own Water White Paper recognises this. It calls for greater collaboration across industries and for preventative interventions that can improve water quality while reducing long-term costs. It even points to work with farmers to reduce pollutants entering waterways as an example of avoiding more expensive treatment downstream.
We recently saw a small example of how that thinking can work in the paint industry.
Together with AkzoNobel, Washbox Global has launched the Micro Wash Kit in the UK, now available through Dulux Decorator Centres. It gives people a simple way to wash painting tools while filtering paint residues from the wash water, helping keep more of that waste out of drains and ultimately our waterways.
It is not going to solve Britain’s water problems on its own. Of course not.But that’s rather the point. Thousands of individual actions, across thousands of products, industries and businesses, can remove pressure from the system before treatment is even necessary.
Big industry leaders such as AkzoNobel can play a particularly important role because they have the scale to turn better practices into normal practices, through product innovation, distribution, education and making the better option easy for customers.
The Clean Water Bill represents a real opportunity to think about water differently. Government needs to regulate. Water companies need to invest. Industry needs to innovate. And all of us need to become more conscious of what we put down the drain.Because the future of clean water cannot simply be about becoming better at cleaning up pollution.
We need to become much better
at not putting it there in the first place.
Comments