The Devon Valley Hotel has put into effect various measures to save water in the months preceding the Day-Zero announcement. Over the last six months we have already cut back on 25% of municipal water usage and we will be taking additional actions to avert Day-Zero, these actions include:
- Non-potable water being used for irrigation has been reduced by two-thirds at this stage and the bare minimum is being used for the vineyard’s upkeep. Once the vineyards have been harvested, we will stop irrigating them all together.
- Only recycled water is being used to water our gardens whilst we are looking at landscaping changes. The hotel will be opting for water-wise plants.
- Our swimming pools are only topped up with non-potable borehole water, and all backwashed water from the pools, are being recycled.
- All in-house laundry water is being stored and recycled. One of the uses of this recycled water is in the staff restrooms currently running off grey water only.
- Bath plugs have been removed from all our guest rooms and baby baths have been made available for guests traveling with infants.
- Guests towels are only being changed every second day of their stay.
- Taps and shower heads will be replaced with specialized nozzles to save ±90% of total water usage.
- We are also giving guests the opportunity to join our water saving initiatives, by supplying all showers with buckets, enabling guests to collect excess water when taking showers.
- Housekeeping collect this grey water from rooms, and re-use where needed.
- Waterless hand sanitisers are made available in all our public bathrooms and we are inserting dual-flush toilet systems for those restrooms that do not have them yet, while also taking measures to reduce the toilet cistern water capacity. The hotel’s maintenance department is investigating the possibility of a waterless urinal system for all public areas.
- The Restaurant is now using recyclable, biodegradable paper serviettes replacing the linen serviettes, reducing laundry volumes. Our Executive Chef, Markus Schwemberger, has effectively implemented waterless cooking, menu items using excessive water have been substituted with water-wise options.
- We will be replacing ice from the ice buckets with reusable plastic ice cubes.
We are enforcing all these initiatives with the aim of halving our municipal water usage.
Should Day-Zero arrive, we are prepared. Our current water supply – with no additional water from the boreholes, lasts for 4 days running at a 100% occupancy.
We have recently added 3 more boreholes to assist with the water demand should the City run dry. Our borehole supply increases our ability to run at full occupancy without being dependable on any supply from the municipality.
Should the boreholes start running dry for some reason after Day-Zero, we have a list of suppliers who can deliver 50 000L of water at a time to top-up our reservoir.
Hopefully we will never reach the dreaded Day-Zero, but if we do, we would like to assure all our guests that we will be able to continue with business as usual.