This month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded a grant to the University of Tulsa to help develop new technology that will allow hotels to monitor the amount of water its guests use in the shower. The reason is simple: hotels consume a significant volume of water every day and there are a lot of them across the country. The EPA is hoping that access to new technology will help conserve potable water use in urban areas.
The fact that the average shower time is eight minutes and requires approximately 18 gallons of water has the EPA thinking that an average one minute reduction in shower times could add up to big savings. In the grant the EPA claims that “most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.”[1] As a result, the EPA has awarded the University approximately $15,000 to create a wireless system to track water use in the shower by guests.
An interdisciplinary team of students led by Tyler Johannes – an associate professor at the School of Chemical Engineering – are conducting research to develop the device. The device, in itself, is fairly simple. It consists of a flow meter with an embedded software system that is linked to a resource management accounting system. The goal is to give guests the ability to go online (or use a smartphone app) to track their water use, and then guide them through modifying their behavior to conserve water.
Johannes, told the Washington Free Beacon that the researchers hope to see the technology “adopted by all major hotels and used across the country.”[2] The EPA hopes the grant will encourage widespread adoption of new behavior modifying technology. However, the agency has clearly acknowledged that the marketplace will decide if there is a demand for this type of technology, not the EPA.
[1] Harrington, The Washington Free Beacon, http://freebeacon.com/issues/epa-wants-to-monitor-how-long-hotel-guests-spend-in-the-shower/
[2] Harrington, The Washington Free Beacon, http://freebeacon.com/issues/epa-wants-to-monitor-how-long-hotel-guests-spend-in-the-shower/