Ever rising electricity and water bills have made us more aware of these resources impact on our disposable income. The effects of rising costs for power and water are not just being felt at home, but also throughout the business community which struggles to remain competitive by reducing operating costs in order to ensure profitability.

While in general we tend to cut utility bills by saving on electricity consumption, we tend to forget that a substantial proportion of these bills is in fact for our water consumption.

The provision of water depends heavily on power consumption on a national scale (four per cent of the power generated in Malta goes for the desalination of seawater) apart from the power requirements for distribution to our homes, and hence the prices of both utilities are correlated.

So ultimately, the ever increasing cost of oil and gas on the international market will keep affecting the most basic of all necessities – clean water supply at home and at work. Even the discharge of our wastewater comes at a cost to pump, treat to European standards, and dispose of or reuse as second-class water.

Renewable energy technologies, such as solar water heaters, photovoltaic panels, wind energy and other sources are an excellent way to cut our energy bills, and also ensure a sustainable future by safeguarding our environment.

However, we tend to overlook the importance of water and wastewater recycling as a way of effecting considerable savings in costs.

The concept of reuse is not new; rainwater harvesting in Malta by using wells at home was certainly a very effective way to achieve this. Nowadays, for different reasons, this practice seems to have gone by the wayside and is taken less seriously.

Sewage treatment and recycling can also be an excellent way of using renewable sources to cut costs, especially in industry and commercial buildings.

Such a concept is very widespread in the Mediterranean region, and has been gaining ground in Malta in the past 10 years. Some prestigious hotels and other entities have wisely decided to invest in wastewater recycling systems by considering wastewater as a resource to enable them to cut their water bills significantly and reduce their overheads.

When wastewater is treated to the highest standards and completely disinfected as per international standards, it is generally reused for ‘second-class’ purposes such as toilet flushing, irrigation, and other general cleaning operations where it would be wasteful to use valuable clean tap water.

In reuse for irrigation purposes, for example, the added nutrients typically found in treated sewage can also benefit the plants being irrigated by enhancing growth.

Treating sewage for reuse can reduce the demand for first class water by as much as 50 per cent. Depending on the technology used and the amount of flow treated, in Malta the cost of treating wastewater can vary between €0.50 and €0.65 per cubic metre, which makes it a viable and cheaper alternative to water provided by desalination plants and bowser water (where water is pumped out from numerous boreholes around the island, thus damaging the water table).

Packaged wastewater treatment plants in commercial buildings, office blocks, and hotels, can be custom designed for installation in basements, or outdoors both above or below ground, depending on the site availability and limitations.

Various technologies are available for the treatment and reuse of sewage and these vary from traditional processes such as aerated filters, to the latest membrane technologies. Payback periods on investment vary with the size of the treatment plants and are worked independently for each project, but can be as low as two years in commercial buildings.

In developed countries, disposal of sewage is controlled through a sewage tariff to finance municipal wastewater treatment, and hence applying the polluter pays principle. These tariffs are normally based on how polluted their wastewater is and the volumes being disposed of.

On the other hand, besides paying for sewage disposal, in various EU countries such as the UK financing incentives are injected by the government to those businesses capable of reusing more than 40 per cent of their wastewater generated at their facilities.

Were such a sewage tariff to be implemented in Malta, investing in ways of reusing wastewater will make the investment in wastewater treatment plants more attractive.