We know many water companies are themselves guilty of profligate waste through unrepaired leaks. So to snitch on a neighbour, who is making a comparatively tiny personal contribution to the drought, seems petty.
But we are only human and it is hard to watch your flowers and vegetables wither and die while your neighbour is still drenching his own produce with gay abandon.
If you have a smart water meter you might be more careful about over-use as Big Brother is watching you. Candy, a wife and mother of three in my nearby town, showed me her own bill for water use. It announced that her total water use was 93m3 between January and July 2022. The bill declared: ‘That’s the same as about 372,000 cups of tea, OR 1,240 showers OR 1,163 baths.’
A recent survey shows that Londoners are the least likely to snitch on their neighbours
‘So I would be wary of using a hose during this drought,’ Candy told me. ‘Because I feel the meter would catch me out.’
But those without smart meters often believe they are special cases. One profligate waterer still using a sprinkler system when I went to her garden for drinks last week said: ‘I thought we were short of vegetables in this country and anyway all my family prefer showers to baths so we can use that saved water to keep the vegetables alive.’
Another woman in Worcestershire argued: ‘Well I have chosen not to have children – so I think I am perfectly entitled to use as much water as I want.’
Yet every little helps, as the supermarket slogan goes, and if every individual would restrict their water use, then the sum of the saving would be greater than the whole of its parts.
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