Hotels, clubs, restaurants and pubs

• Manufacturing
• Commercial office buildings and shopping centres
• Hotels, clubs, restaurants and pubs
• Hospitals and health facilities
• Tertiary education facilities
• Schools
• Councils
• All business sectors

Hospitality venues use nearly 14 per cent of Sydney’s business water use – or 52 million litres of water every day.

Is your club or hotel water efficient?

You can benchmark water use to see if your club, hotel or food business is water efficient.

Club benchmarks

Type of club	Average L/patron/day	Target L/patron/day
No pool, no cooling tower	27	20
Cooling tower, but no swimming pool	35	22
Cooling tower and swimming pool	39	28

Hotel benchmarks

Type of hotel	TargetL/guest/night
No cooling tower, no laundry	333
Cooling tower, but no laundry	384
Cooling tower and laundry	444

Restaurant benchmarks

The benchmarks developed for water use for non-Asian style kitchens are below.

(litres of water per food cover)*

Good <35

Fair 35 – 45

Poor >45

^*Use based on total kitchen use divided by the number of covers or restaurant customers

How to save water in hotels, clubs and restaurants

Sydney Water audits show that the main areas of water use in hotels, clubs, restaurants and pubs are:

• Leaks
• Amenities
• Kitchens
• Cooling towers

Hotels, clubs, restaurants and pubs can save water by:

• Installing flow restrictors on basin taps and showers to reduce flow to at least a 3A rated nine litres per minute. In hotels, guest rooms use between 40 per cent and 60 of all water consumed.
• Installing flow restrictors on taps in public amenities, and taps that automatically turn off.
• Installling dual flush toilets. The high use toilets get in hospitality venues makes replacing toilets more cost effective.
• Maintaining cooling towers and keeping them free from leaks. Also, making your venue more energy efficient will reduce the load on your cooling tower, saving water and money.
• Encouraging staff to report leaks and be water wise. The Hospitality training DVD can help with this.
• Using high efficiency pre-rinse spray valves and trigger nozzles on hoses in kitchens.
• If you have a swimming pool, use a pool cover, to reduce evaporation when the pool is not in use. Observe the manufacturer’s instructions for pool filter backwashing frequency. Sub meter your swimming pool to make sure there are no undetected leaks.
• If you have a large laundry, new generation continuous batch washers reuse rinse water and are very efficient. If you use smaller domestic machines, choose 4 or 5A rated models.
• Mulch garden areas deeply. Use alternative water supplies, such as collected rainwater or treated greywater to irrigate gardens.
• Replace traditional wok stoves with waterless wok stoves where possible.

Best practice guidelines, fact sheets and case studies

You can either customise a best practice guideline document for your business using Sydney Water's customised water management publication tool or click on one of the links below for ready-made best practice guidelines and fact sheets designed to help businesses in the hospitality sector save water.

• Best Practice Guidelines for Clubs (PDF - 11378KB)
• Best Practice Guidelines for Hotels (PDF - 801KB)
• Kitchens and food courts (PDF - 653KB)
• Best Practice Guidelines for Cooling Towers in Commercial Buildings (PDF - 1.19MB)
• Swimming pools (PDF - 267KB)
• Waterless Urinals (PDF - 253KB)
• Public amenities (PDF - 288KB)
• Outdoor areas (PDF - 246KB)

To find out how the EDC Business Program has helped hotels, clubs, restaurants and pubs to save water see our case studies.

Contact the EDC Business team

Use our contact form for membership enquiries and questions about the program.