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The survey looks the stages of change response scale to assess the types of things that people were doing to use less water. In total, the survey covered seven behaviours which would use less water. Responses to these questions are summarised in Table 14

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The majority of respondents were already doing each of the ‘repeated’ behaviours shown in Table 14. Three-quarters (74%) said they already only washed full loads of laundry, and around two-thirds said they already made an effort to cut down on water usage at home (69%), took showers instead of a baths (68%) and turned the tap off whilst brushing their teeth (66%). Only a small proportion had adopted any of the behaviours only to relapse (between 4% and 7% across the four behaviours covered). Similarly small proportions of respondents said they were contemplating these behaviours but were yet to do them. Those at the pre-contemplation stage and those who had already rejected these behaviours were in the minority.

The proportion of people who reported making an effort to cut down on water usage at home has increased from about half (52%), as reported in the 2007 Defra survey, to 69% in the 2009 survey. Respondents were less likely to have adopted any of the one-off measures to use less water in their home. While a third (32%) had installed a water butt, a relatively small proportion (13%) were using a water displacement device, and almost no one (3%) had an aerated shower. While a small proportion of respondents were contemplating installing each of these items – 13% were thinking about installing a water butt, 7% a water displacement device and 6% an aerated shower – overall people were much more likely to have rejected the idea of installing these items (around one in five for each item). In the case of water displacement devices and aerated showers the largest group of respondents were at the pre-contemplation stage ‘i.e. they hadn’t really thought about doing this’ or ‘hadn’t heard’ of the item – 55% for water displacement devices and 65% for aerated showers.

Frequency of using less water

Respondents were also asked how frequently they made an effort to cut down on water usage at home – selecting a response from a six point scale ranging from always to never. Around a third (35%) of respondents said they always cut down on water usage, with the same proportion (31%) indicating that they did this either very often (15%) or quite often (16%). A fifth (21%) said they cut down on water usage sometimes (12%) or occasionally (9%), while 11% indicated that this was something they never did.