Every drop counts: water efficiency in action

Centro Vasco da Gama is one of Sonae Sierra’s flagship assets in Portugal. Situated in a dense business and high-end residential district of Lisbon, it was built in 1999. While several refurbishments over the life of the centre have enhanced its sustainability credentials, following the latest renovation, in 2017, we discovered that the centre’s water efficiency could be improved.

Our analysis found that the centre uses around 60,000 m3 of water per year, which equates to the consumption of around 1,100 inhabitants of the city of Lisbon.

Inefficient water consumption does not only impact costs and resources; companies face physical, regulatory, reputational, and stakeholder risks when they fail to tackle the water challenge inherent in real estate assets.

Sonae Sierra’s Dive^® Programme, which not only helps determine if a property is performing in line with the theoretical optimum, also allow to identify the potential improvement measures.

It was identified that the most recently installed toilet taps did not feature any additional, water-saving measures, and were consuming a range of 3.5 to 4.28 litres per minute. And this consumption level of around 3.5 litres per minute could be reduced to a figure in the range of 1.9 litres per minute, saving up to 2,500 m3 of water per year, with good financial benefits.

The solution for saving water in this case was determined to be the installation of tap aerators, a low-expense mechanism which does not compromise the hand-washing experience.

The installation of aerators in three blocks of WCs reduced water consumption by around 46%, equivalent to 1,300 m3 or €4,500 of potable water per year, enough to serve 25 of the city’s inhabitants.

The average flow is now 1.5 litres per minute, instead of 3.5 litres per minute.

Our Dive^® Programme has shown that taking care of the smallest drop makes a big difference to water consumption, with a favourable impact on both costs and resources.

• Since 2014, Sonae Sierra has implemented €115,000 worth of water efficiency measures identified by Dive® in 19 assets, avoiding annually around €428,000 in costs and the consumption of 105,000 m3 of water.
• Based on the result of the Dive^® Benchmarking Operational Update, with the simple installation of tap aerators in the refurbished WCs of Centro Vasco da Gama we were able to reduce the water consumption by 46% saving €4,500 annually.