Amount awarded: £270,000
Led by: South Staffordshire Water
Partners: Waterwise, Severn Trent Water, South West Water, Affinity Water, Southern Water, Northumbrian Water, Get Water Fit, Hindu Climate Action, Eco Dharma Network, Cambridge University – Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge Central Mosque
The project seeks to establish a deeper understanding on how water is used and valued in different faiths and cultures. The aim is to develop an evidence-based comprehensive water efficiency engagement and support framework which water companies can adopt in the future. The project brings together a range of experts, academics, and faith groups to develop and introduce new bespoke water saving interventions and behaviour change campaigns linked to faith and culture. This could lead to significant environmental and social benefits, such as reducing per capita consumption for water, building public trust and value, as well as supporting hard to reach vulnerable customers by opening new channels of engagement and communication.
We currently have two behaviour change campaigns live – the first is our “Reviving the Sunnah” campaign which focuses on the act of ‘wudu’, within the Islamic faith and the second campaign is our rice washing campaign focusing but not limited to the UK’s South Asian community. For our “Reviving the Sunnah” campaign we have so far had over 120 pledges to save water through wudu and have requested free water saving devices including our exclusive wudu ablution bottle (a first time for any UK water company) and/or requested a home water audit undertaken by Groundwork. Our rice washing campaign went live in August where we worked with Malaysian MasterChef winner, Ping Coombes, plus Garden Organic’s expert and author of South Asian Beauty, Sonia Haria, to create content appealing to gardeners, cooks and beauty enthusiasts. We created a series of videos showing water-efficient rice washing and ways to reuse the starchy water, such as watering plants and in hair/skin spritz. So far, the rice washing videos has had 86,014 ThruPlays (views) in two weeks live (one week per video) and received a lot of positive feedback in comments on social media. We also plan to release 30 second TV ads this Autumn via Sky AdSmart and engaged with local Gurdwara in Smethwick to capture their feedback. The next few months (as we go towards project final reporting end of January) we will be starting to evaluate and collate all learnings (both qual and quant) as we have already started to undertake a number of independent led focus groups (led by Explain) with different communities currently covering the Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities to gain further insight into attitudes to water and barriers and opportunities to save water.
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For more information on Water efficiency in faith and diverse communities, take a look at the following resources:
If you have any questions, email the project directly at [email protected].
