Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:31 pm on 23 November 2022.
Well, thank you. The Member raises a really important issue. As she says, our water system is under continued stress because of man-made climate change and it is going to get worse. The messages coming out of COP last week in Egypt were quite distressing about the state of the science and the level of the severity of the threat to us. So, conserving our water and treating it as the scarce resource that it is is essential. I've welcomed the campaign by Friends of the Earth to highlight this.
There are number of things going on. There are individual initiatives by water companies. So, Dŵr Cymru, for example, has a set of tips that it promotes, encouraging people to take small measures for people to make a difference, like taking a shower instead of a bath, not leaving the tap running when you're brushing your teeth—these, cumulatively, make a meaningful contribution. Ofwat have also challenged the water companies to reduce leakage by at least 15 per cent over the next five years and both water companies in Wales are committed to doing this.
We are working with the UK Government on proposals to introduce a water efficiency labelling scheme to label water-using products such as taps, showers, toilets and dishwashers, and this will enable consumers to compare the relative water efficiency of these appliances, as they can for gas and electricity appliances. There are no plans at the moment to introduce targets, but clearly that's something we need to keep under review, depending on how the environment continues to change.