Water savings in schools: 8 measures and a ready-made project for students

Water savings in schools rest on three fronts: finding and fixing leaks, replacing taps and toilets that use too much, and reading the water meter every week so the waste does not come back. That is the method of the University of São Paulo’s Water Conservation Program, which cut the monthly water demand of its main campus by 52% between 1998 and 2014. In a school it works on a smaller scale, and students can take part in every step.

In short:

• An empty school at the weekend is the best leak test: whatever the meter records between Friday night and Monday morning is a leak or a forgotten use.
• A toilet with a visible trickle wastes 144 litres a day, and a dripping tap from 6 to over 32, according to the water conservation manual of Brazil’s National Water Agency (ANA), FIESP and SindusCon-SP.
• The swaps the University of São Paulo standardised: self-closing taps with aerators, 6-litre toilets instead of 9 litres or more, and self-closing valves on changing-room showers.
• At the university, water once took 16.79% of operating expenses, twice the share of electricity. After the programme, it fell to 6.24%.
• Results last only with ongoing management and new habits among the people who use the school. The student project, further down, takes care of that part.

Where does a school use and lose water?

In the toilets, the kitchen, cleaning and the playground. In the United States, the EPA lists toilets and washrooms, landscaping, heating and cooling, and cafeteria kitchens as the largest water uses in educational facilities. The order changes from school to school, and only metering shows yours.

Where	How water is lost	What fixes it
Toilets and washrooms	Badly adjusted flush valve with a constant trickle, taps left open, urinals without control	Adjustment, self-closing taps, 6-litre toilets
Drinking fountains	Tap that does not close properly or leaks at the base	Regular maintenance
Kitchen and canteen	Dishes and food washed under running water, high-flow taps	Aerators, lever taps, scraping leftovers before washing
Cleaning	Hose left running to wash the yard, corridors and pavement	Bucket, broom and mop, with written rules for the team
Yard, garden and sports court	Watering in the midday sun, changing-room showers left on	Early-morning watering, rainwater, self-closing showers
Water tanks	Badly adjusted float valve that lets the overflow pipe run	Adjusting or replacing the float valve and a watertightness test

The University of São Paulo programme started exactly there. In the loss-reduction stage, the focus was on external pipes and storage tanks, especially float valves and overflows. A tank whose overflow keeps running wastes water 24 hours a day, and hardly anyone climbs up to look.

How do you know if the school has a leak?

With the water meter and a weekend. Schools have an advantage few other buildings have: they stand empty for two full days.

1. On Friday, after the last staff member leaves, write down the meter reading or take a photo of the dial.
2. Make sure nothing will use water: automatic irrigation off, no pool top-up, nobody on duty.
3. On Monday, before anyone arrives, read it again.

If the number changed, water went somewhere while the school was closed. The difference in cubic metres, multiplied by a thousand, is the loss in litres over that weekend. Divided by two and a half days, it gives the approximate daily loss, school days included.

The manual Conservação e reúso da água em edificações, by ANA with FIESP and SindusCon-SP, estimates how much the most common leaks waste:

Leak	Estimated loss
Dripping tap	From 6 to more than 32 litres a day
Tap with a 2 mm trickle	More than 114 litres a day
Toilet with a visible trickle	144 litres a day
Urinal with a visible trickle	144 litres a day

In a school with twenty toilets, three with a trickle already exceed 400 litres a day. To find the spot, start with the toilets: food dye inside the cistern, coffee grounds in the bowl of a flush-valve toilet. Then check the tank overflows and look for floors wet for no reason, damp stains on walls and a patch of grass greener than the rest. The full step by step is in invisible leaks: find them before the bill does.

What are the 8 measures that save the most water at school?

In the order in which they usually return the most for the least work:

1. Fix leaks and adjust float valves. It is the measure that gives water back from day one, because leaks do not rest at night or during the holidays.
2. Replace washroom taps with self-closing models fitted with aerators. That is the University of São Paulo guideline for washrooms. In auditorium washrooms, the guideline called for presence sensors.
3. Replace toilets of 9 litres or more with 6-litre toilets and adjust the flush valves.
4. Fit self-closing valves on changing-room showers and on urinals.
5. In the kitchen, use lever taps with aerators and scrape leftovers off plates and pans before washing, as the EPA recommends for commercial kitchens.
6. Swap the hose for a bucket and broom when cleaning yards, corridors and pavements, with written rules for the team.
7. Water the garden early in the morning or late in the afternoon and, where there is infrastructure, use rainwater for watering and washing the yard, with a tank kept separate from drinking water.
8. Read the meter every week and track consumption per student. A simple chart on the notice board shows when something drifts. With remote monitoring, the alert reaches a phone.

Two lessons from the University of São Paulo spare headaches. In a survey of 450 users, the main complaint about self-closing taps was the difference in closing time from one tap to another, which the maintenance team itself can adjust. And against vandalism, the programme recommended vandal-resistant models and campaigns, with technical support from manufacturers. In a school, both matter.

More measures for any building, with how many litres each habit uses, are in fifteen ways to cut water waste at work.

How much can a school save with these measures?

It depends on the starting point: an old building, with leaks and decades-old fittings, has more to gain than a new school. The most solid figures in Brazil come from the University of São Paulo programme, measured unit by unit:

Group	Period	Reduction in consumption
Units with human use only, no laboratories (the most similar to a school)	1998 to 2003	33% to 39%
The 7 first-phase units, with about half of campus consumption	1998 to 2003	48%
Whole main campus, 28 units	1998 to 2003	36%
Main campus, with the permanent programme	1998 to 2014	52%

The weight in the budget explains why the effort pays. In 1997, water accounted for 16.79% of the university’s operating expenses, excluding staff and investment, against 8.26% for electricity. In 2003, it was 6.24%, even with the water tariff 69% higher over the period.

In T&D’s SEA 360º, the ceiling observed in the full programme is a 70% reduction. Each school’s figure comes from the diagnosis and the measured baseline, not from a promise made before looking at the building.

How do you get students and teachers involved in saving water?

By turning the savings into lessons. Replacing fittings saves water at once; what keeps consumption from creeping back is habit. The University of São Paulo programme itself concludes that water conservation takes much more than fixing leaks and replacing fittings: it takes ongoing management and, above all, a change in users’ behaviour.

The project below fits into two months of school and uses the school itself as a laboratory:

Step	What students do	What they learn
1. Water map	Walk around the school and mark on a plan every tap, toilet, fountain, shower and water tank	Map reading, counting, classification
2. Meter reading	Read the meter at the entrance on the same day and time each week and record it in a table	Units of measurement, cubic metres and litres, data recording
3. Weekend test	Compare the Friday night reading, taken by the caretaker, with the Monday morning one	Hypothesis, test and conclusion
4. Drip hunt	Place a measuring cup under a dripping tap for 10 minutes and work out the loss per day and per month	Proportion, multiplication, estimation
5. Campaign and board	Make the posters for the washrooms and canteen and update a board with the month’s consumption	Communication, charts, citizenship

The project adapts to age:

• Early years: stories about where water comes from, brushing teeth with the tap off as a class routine, watering the vegetable garden with a watering can and following the repair of a dripping tap. Children learn by watching the school do it.
• Primary and lower secondary: all five steps, with the drip calculation in maths and the water cycle in science.
• Upper secondary: a rainwater harvesting project for the garden or the yard, calculating how much the roof can collect (each millimetre of rain on 1 m² equals 1 litre, before losses), and a report to the head teacher with the measures in order of priority.

To make the results last, set up a water committee with the head, maintenance, the kitchen, a teacher and student representatives. The University of São Paulo did just that: a committee in each unit, bridging the people who use the water and the people who fix things. A challenge between classes, with the month’s consumption on the board, keeps the topic alive after the campaign ends.

How does T&D help schools and colleges save water?

With SEA 360º, in two phases. Implementation, with no construction work, covers the baseline under the IPMVP protocol, efficiency technology at points of use, electronic leak detection, repairs and training for the maintenance team. In ongoing management, T&D tracks consumption and delivers monthly reports on financial, operational and ESG performance.

For tanks and pumps, TDRR remote monitoring tracks reservoir levels and hourly consumption and sends an alert by app, text message or WhatsApp when something drifts, including at night and during the holidays. For campuses with laboratories and a university restaurant, the path is in how a university campus cuts its water use, and the full method for any business in the guide to water savings for businesses.

Frequently asked questions

What is the biggest water waste in a school?

The leak nobody sees: the toilet with a trickle, the float valve that lets the tank overflow and the cracked pipe. It loses water 24 hours a day, holidays included. A toilet with a visible trickle wastes 144 litres a day, according to the ANA, FIESP and SindusCon-SP manual.

Do self-closing taps work in schools?

They do, and they are the University of São Paulo guideline for washrooms: a mechanical self-closing model with an aerator and flow regulator. Choose vandal-resistant models and adjust the closing time, which was users’ main complaint in the university survey and can be set by maintenance.

How do you teach water saving in the early years?

Through routine and experience more than explanation: brushing teeth with the tap off, watering the garden with a watering can, hearing stories about where water comes from and following the repair of a dripping tap. The habits children see at school, they take home.

Can a school use rainwater?

Yes, for uses that do not require drinking water, such as watering, washing the yard and, with a dedicated installation, flushing toilets. Rainwater needs a tank and pipes separate from the drinking-water network, plus maintenance, and Brazil’s technical standards body has a specific standard for it, NBR 15527. At school, harvesting also makes a good student project.

Who should be in charge of saving water at school?

A small committee, with the head, maintenance, the kitchen, a teacher and student representatives. The University of São Paulo programme worked that way, with a committee in each unit. And someone must own the weekly meter reading: without that number, nobody notices when the waste returns.

Sources

• University of São Paulo, PUERHE: history of the Water Conservation Program, in Portuguese: a 52% cut in the main campus’s monthly water demand, from 1998 to 2014
• Silva, G. S.; Tamaki, H. O.; Gonçalves, O. M. Implementation of water conservation programs in university campi. Ambiente Construído, v. 6, n. 1, 2006, in Portuguese: programme phases, fitting replacement guidelines, reductions by unit and the weight of water in operating costs
• Conservação e reúso da água em edificações (ANA, FIESP and SindusCon-SP, 2005), leak loss table, reproduced in Souza et al., XXI Brazilian Water Resources Symposium (ABRHidro, 2015), in Portuguese
• EPA WaterSense, Types of Facilities: the largest water uses in educational facilities
• EPA WaterSense at Work, section 4.1, Pre-Rinse Spray Valves (2023): scraping leftovers before washing dishes
• T&D SEA 360º and TDRR