Gandhinagar uses 26% more water per capita than Ahmedabad!

AHMEDABAD: The babus’ city guzzles 26.5% more water at 83 litres per day per household compared to 105 litres for Ahmedabad, revealed a direct measurement in a study carried out by IIT-Gandhinagar (IIT-Gn) researchers along with other agencies.
The study revealed that Amdavadis use more water for bathing than their Gandhinagar counterparts, whereas Gandhinagar residents used more water for dishwashing and floor washing.The cities used almost the same water per household for laundry.

The paper ‘Indoor water end-use pattern and its prospective determinants in the twin cities of Gujarat, India: Enabling targeted urban water management strategies’ by Prof Manish Kumar and Ayushi Sharma from IIT Gandhinagar (IIT-Gn), Naresh Tabhani from GPCB and Yurina Otaki from Hitotsubashi University in Japan got published in an Elsevier journal ‘Journal of Environmental Management.’ The study was funded by WIN Foundation.
Prof Kumar said that the study employed both direct and indirect (survey) measurements for the water consumption. “It was to understand the end-user pattern of water usage and variation in the pattern even at the distance of 30-40 km,” he said. “The study also provided insight into household behaviour – for example, only 12% respondents said that they operate fully-loaded washing machines, and only 29% had sensors installed to reduce water wastage from overhead tanks.”
The primary purpose of the study was to also find the scope for greywater usage. The researchers said that compared to other cities across the globe having done similar study, the cities’ per capita water consumption is much less. For example, 52 litres and 50 litres used for bathing in Melbourne, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand, the cities on the higher side used half at 25 litres per capita per day.
“But we must keep in mind that the freshwater is a precious commodity. We can recycle the majority of the household water for purposes such as toilet flushing, car wash or gardening. For that, we must understand the consumption pattern and make infrastructural changes. We must not waste two buckets of freshwater – fetched from hundreds of kilometers away through countless pumps – on daily car wash,” said Prof Kumar.