The Water for a Healthy Country Flagship has been studying the social acceptability of using treated wastewater with important research findings for Australia’s water crisis.
Many communities support the concept of water re-use, but many technically sound schemes have failed because communities have rejected them.
Research has shown that people’s acceptance of using recycled wastewater reduces as it comes closer to human contact.
Emotions, or the 'yuck' factor, play a big part in people’s acceptance, but little has been understood about just how people make their decisions to accept of reject re-use schemes, until now.
The Flagship’s urban water program has been studying the social acceptability of using treated wastewater with important research findings for Australia’s water crisis.
A psychological model has been developed to measure intended community behaviour in relation to wastewater re-use schemes.
The Flagship set out to systematically investigate the factors involved in decision making. The latter part of the program involved two case studies in 2004 and 2005 – with
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an indirect potable re-use proposal in Perth (wastewater injected and stored in an underground aquifer and then pumped out as drinking water)
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a horticultural irrigation scheme at Werribee south-west of Melbourne.
The case studies were chosen as they were immediate and 'real' for people to consider their decision to either drink the water, or to buy the horticultural produce.
In each city, 400 randomly selected people were surveyed and the results were remarkably similar.
In the Perth study,
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31 per cent of respondents said they would unconditionally drink the recycled water, which was reasonably high compared to past findings
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51 per cent, more than half, had reservations about drinking the water
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18 per cent said they would not drink the water at all.
This could be attributed to people’s perceptions of having a medium such as a groundwater aquifer to naturally ‘filter’ the wastewater.
If the water was not pumped into the aquifer first,
In these conditions
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only 13 per cent of respondents, similar to past findings, said they would drink the water.
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43 per cent of the remaining respondents, felt unsure
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44 per cent would not consider drinking water from this type of scheme.
'This is quite important for water planners and providers that are considering indirect potable reuse where it actually goes back to a water way or an aquifer.'
Ms Blair Nancarrow, Australian Research Centre for Water in Society
Ms Blair Nancarrow from the Australian Research Centre for Water in Society said, 'This is quite important for water planners and providers that are considering indirect potable re-use where it actually goes back to a water way or an aquifer. If it is just taken out of the sewage system, treated, put into a pipe and sent to homes, there is little community support.'
In the Werribee study, the more that people felt an obligation to protect the environment, the more positive were their attitudes to buying vegetables grown with recycled wastewater.
This was different to the Perth study and may be because people perceive greater environmental damage associated with the use of scarce fresh water supplies for irrigation than they do through the use of water for household use:
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thirty-five per cent of respondents said they would buy the vegetables without hesitation
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more than half, (55 per cent) were unsure
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very few (10 per cent) said they would definitely not buy the vegetables.
The decision making model identified the major points that are involved in people’s intended behaviours. The key factors are:
Interestingly, knowledge of the re-use projects was not a factor in people’s decision making.
Ms Nancarrow said that for the first time we have been able to measure and analyse what people intend to do and what influences their decisions. 'It’s a psychological model that can be measured by a simple questionnaire.'
'While some refinement is still needed on the research the model will be like a tool box which enables planners to gauge community response and put in place a program of public engagement to maximise the positive factors in people’s decisions and minimise the negative factors. This knowledge could have significant impact on the success of implementing reuse schemes.'
Read the 128-page report
To drink… or not to drink? Predicting community behaviour in relation to wastewater reuse.
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