Research, consultation, planning, communications

The Waterline service in Tauranga was designed to promote the efficient use of water by providing a range of advisory and support services to households and businesses, a schools water education programme, and through improvements in system efficiency. Over the first two years of the programme it responded to over 1400 inquiries, made over 1300 home visits, delivered water efficiency education to over 8400 students in 20 separate schools, and undertook a range of flow testing, leak detection, audits, and inspection operations.

The communications strategy for Waterline was based on three key precepts:

1. 1.it was recognised the experience of most “public good” programmes (such as energy and water conservation) require a comprehensive approach for best effect. It is widely appreciated that information programmes per se tend to have little or no enduring effect. People can become very articulate in the language of conservation, can develop strong pro-conservation attitudes, and can even express the intention to conserve to interviewers when they are polled, and yet still not change their behaviour. To bridge the gap between intention to act in a particular way and actually doing something requires an appropriate level of support for the change in behaviour. In the water field this can be provided directly, through incentive programmes (for such items as dual flush toilets and low flow shower heads) and personal assistance (such as fixing leaking taps) or indirectly by a range of complementary

   

   measures which reinforce individual actions, such as leak detection projects;
   

2. 2.it is important to present efficiency as a positive not a negative concept. Conservation has unfortunate associations of “doing without” which do not mesh well with the broader consumption drivers of modern Western society and should be avoided except for extreme situations; and
   

3. 3.a variety of channels are required to reach different segments of the community which can be broadly divided between industrial/commercial, and domestic consumers with the latter subdivided on the basis of lifecycle stage.
   

The Waterline programme responded to the challenges of the design issues in the following ways:

1. two advisors, one for domestic and the other for the commercial sectors were employed to provide direct support to consumers;
   

2. a wide range of information channels to the community were used including press, radio, a schools programme, Council publications, addresses to service groups, cinema advertising, displays, and the distribution of fridge magnets;
   

3. the programme adopted the theme “Water. Let’s make every drop count” as a positive, inclusive message.  Materials targeting the general consumer avoided resort to discussions about global water shortages and similar rhetoric used in water conservation programmes elsewhere. The focus instead was on practical information to improve the efficiency of water usage;
   

4. there was a strong emphasis on personal contacts and practical actions both through the work of the Council’s advisors and the schools programme. These personal contacts were promoted in a number of  ways including: addresses to service clubs; the painting of the domestic adviser’s van in a distinctive livery which has encouraged people to approach the advisor in the street; and displays at “expos” and other shows.
   

5. 
   

The schools programme provided an important route for information into homes with school-age children and also included a range of tasks for the students to undertake (under parental supervision) in their homes.

A copy of the project review report can be downloaded from here.