This week WYSE Travel Confederation member, The Student Hotel group, kicked off an innovative initiative to cut its water consumption by incentivising positive water-saving behaviour initially in Italy, and soon at The Student Hotel locations throughout Europe. Amphiro meters will be fitted to showers in the new Student Hotel buildings and will display water and energy consumption so students can see how much they are using. The Student Hotel said it will act as a ‘Living Lab’ where research initiatives will help to develop and promote smart, sustainable living for its student residents and surrounding communities.
Source: The Student Hotel group
The Student Hotel and its partners have said they will continue to pioneer scalable and innovative approaches to urban living challenges. They’re implementing measures to help student residents, hotel guests and their co-working community reduce water and energy consumption and improve overall conservation efforts, particularly in urban hubs like Rome and other Italian cities.
According to The Student Hotel group, City governments and industries targeting out-of-town guests will benefit from the insights about water and energy usage gained as part of this initiative, laying the groundwork for shared solutions to consumption, decreased usage and smarter, scalable approaches to city living throughout Europe.
Saving Energy When Others Pay the Bill
The initiative extends The Student Hotel group’s ‘Saving Energy When Others Pay the Bill’ project to Rome, Florence and Bologna, locations of the first four Student Hotels in Italy, using revolutionary Amphiro devices that promote water-saving behaviour among residents and guests.
Saving Energy When Others Pay the Bill is an ongoing Student Hotel research project in collaboration with Wageningen University (WUR), Bectro Installatietechniek and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) in the Netherlands.
Michel Handgraaf, lead researcher on the commitment to 20% water-savings initiative, said, “We are extremely happy to continue and expand our fantastic collaboration with The Student Hotel. Let’s take our international Living Lab to the next level for more scientifically rigorous and practically relevant research.”
The Student Hotel group’s water-saving initiative in Italy is founded on solid international research and local findings from the existing project in the Netherlands using Amphiro devices. Initial WUR findings for the project in the Netherlands corroborate research conducted by Amphiro and researchers at the University of Bonn, the University of Lausanne, ETH Zurich and the University of Bamberg, showing that the devices incentivise people to use an average of 20% less water per shower. At The Student Hotel locations in Rotterdam and The Hague, WUR found that students and hotel guests used an average of 20% less water per shower.
Saving water and promoting water-conserving behaviour is critical to the sustainability of many cities in Europe, particularly in countries such as Italy. According to a 2010 report by the European Commission, Italy’s use of water is ‘clearly’ unsustainable, with more than 20% of its long-term water supplies used every year. The WUR findings highlight the incredible potential that scaling the use of Amphiro devices can have in other cities.
The Student Hotel group said it is committed to further research initiatives with university and private partners into CSR, sustainability, shared mobility, circular economies, transformative communities and smart cities. For more information on their various initiatives, visit their website. View the video below for additional information on their project, ‘Saving Energy When Others Pay the Bill’.