MOSCOW // Rinsing socks and underwear in running water, 30-minute showers, leaving the tap on while attending to business in the other room: all of these practices have helped make Muscovites traditionally the most wasteful tap water users of any major European city. But thanks to a series of developments - including a citywide programme to install water meters and the replacing of ageing pipes - the situation is improving in Moscow, the capital of a country where water has always been plenty, according to Mosvodokanal, the water supplier for the Russian capital.
Muscovites' average daily water consumption has dropped by almost 80 litres over the past several years, hitting an average of 270 litres per person per day in 2007, according to Mosvodokanal statistics. "Muscovites have ceased being water gluttons," said Larissa Danilina, an official with Mosvodokanal. Moscow remains well ahead European countries - where residential water consumption rates are about 200 litres per person per day - but behind North America, where people use about 350 litres daily, according to data from various western governments.
Germans use just 125 litres of water daily per capita, according to Mosvodokanal. While Moscow and its 11 million residents have made progress in terms of water conservation, the situation remains problematic on a nationwide scale - particularly when one factors in industrial water use. Yury Trutnev, the Russian natural resources and environment minister, said in a television interview in June that water intake per GDP unit is 50 times what it is in Great Britain.
Such waste is characteristic of broader environmental trends in Russia, which continues to be plagued by pollution and has the world's least efficient economy, according to the International Energy Agency's most recent study on efficiency, released in 2006. "We are still allowing ourselves to use this treasure at inexcusably wasteful and ineffective levels," Vladimir Putin, the powerful Russian prime minister, told a government meeting on water resources last month.
"We are not even keeping count." Muscovites' water consumption is actually higher than in many larger Russian cities. A survey of 40 cities spread across Russia's seven federal districts shows an average daily water use per capita at 254 litres, according to figures from the Russian Association of Water Supply and Water Disposal. The major Russian city thirstiest for municipal water is the former imperial capital, St Petersburg, whose denizens use 370 litres per person per day, according to the association's figures.
Environmentally conscious Europeans are often shocked to see how Russians can simply leave the tap running while attending to other housework. Russians abroad, meanwhile, are often perplexed by many Europeans' stingy use of water. Moscow's success in reducing domestic water use has come largely on the back of a citywide programme to install water meters in apartments to help residents make a connection between cost and consumption.
Water meters actually began appearing in Moscow apartments in the late 19th century but were scrapped altogether by Soviet authorities in 1935, said Alla Baikova, a guide at Moscow's Water Museum, which is operated by Mosvodokanal. With no motivation to conserve, excessive water consumption was rampant in Soviet times. In the early 1970s, Muscovites were using about 500 litres of water per person per day, according to Mosvodokanal figures. The high water use rates continued into post-Soviet Russia, and in 1995 Moscow residents pushed the city's water works system to the limits, using seven million cubic metres of water in a single day.
"At that point the city had a choice: beef up our systems or promote conservation," Ms Baikova said. "They opted for conservation." Until recent years, Moscow residents have paid a fixed tariff for water. But Moscow utilities companies have begun charging for water - currently 11.8 rubles (Dh 1.8) per cubic metre of cold water - and installed water meters in 99 per cent of all apartment buildings.
Residents have the choice of splitting the cost of the building's monthly water bill evenly with their neighbours or installing their own water meters in their apartments. Currently more than one million Moscow apartments are equipped with water meters, up from less than 500,000 four years ago, Ms Danilina said. "With water meters, people can see what they are spending," said Igor Podgorny, an analyst on energy efficiency with Greenpeace in Moscow. "Spending 1,000 rubles on water is a significant monthly expenditure for a lot of Russians."
Despite some progress, said Ms Baikova, convincing Russians - whose country has the second-largest fresh water reserves in the world after Brazil - to use less water will be a long process. "We love to bathe and go to the banya [a traditional Russian steam bath]," Ms Baikova said. "We're never going to become like Germans." @Email:cschreck@thenational.ae