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WPC
Wa
te
Rundown of WPC
breakaways
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is
l if
e
By Fiona Ingham
The 11th World Plumbing Council Conference broke with
tradition: four breakaway sessions were held in which various
speakers thrashed out pertinent issues that had been grouped
under the themes of energy, sanitation, environment, and water.
Breakaway session: energy
John Joseph, principal consultant and managing
director at John Mech-El Technologies in
Mumbai, India, chaired the three sessions on
energy. He said that the major point that surfaced
from the discussions is that energy conservation
implies resource conservation. For that reason,
the primary focus should be on resource
conservation. Joseph pointed out that the
sessions tended not to focus on the behavioural
changes of energy and water consumers, but on
the technology.
John Joseph, principal consultant
and managing director at John
Mech-El Technologies, chairing the
sessions on energy.
Product manager at Wavin in the Netherlands,
Albert Alferink, shared his experiences in Brazil in
promoting better water, wastewater, and energy
management. Alferink spoke about the training
of professionals, applying efficient technologies,
new technology, research into new technology,
and energy efficient products. He also talked
about scaling this technology up to application at
international levels.
District head of water and sanitation, Ian
Isaacs, and senior professional officer of water
and sanitation at the City of Cape Town, Clyde
Koen, covered the topic of water conservation,
specifically the water and demand management
programme being developed in the City of
Cape Town. Koen described groundbreaking
techniques used in Cape Town, such as the
smoke detectors for detecting leakages or
November 2016 Volume 22 I Number 9
contaminations, cross connections, and robotic
CCTV inserted into pipelines that travel through
the pipelines to detect fat formations or leaks.
The executive director at Abrinstal & Newman
(Brazil) and vice-chair of ISO Technical
Committee 310, Dr Alberto Fossa, spoke
about the energy efficiency policy and energy
management standards related to sustainable
access to water and sanitation. He said that
historically, efforts to improve water and energy
efficiency have been separated, and that there
were two aspects to consider: supply and
demand, and doing more and better with less.
Fossa warned that current practices will lead to
a massive and unsustainable gap between global
supply and demand. Reducing water use and
effects through resource efficiency should be
at the top of the list for every energy and water
planner as well as a focus for policymakers
everywhere.
He pointed out that water and/or energy
efficiency improvements with very favourable
payback periods often do not get implemented
because of other priorities. Even those that are
implemented may not be sustained due to a lack
of supportive operational/maintenance practices.
Fossa made the point that commissioning or
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