Overall Rating	Silver - expired
Overall Score	59.36
Liaison	Ben Dharmendra
Submission Date	July 30, 2021

STARS v2.2

University of Sydney
OP-21: Water Use

Status

Score

Responsible Party

3.28 / 4.00

Zoe Morrison
Strategy Advisor
Strategy Office

"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Level of ”Physical Risk Quantity” for the institution’s main campus as indicated by the World Resources Institute Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas:

Low to Medium

Part 1. Reduction in potable water use per person

Total water withdrawal (potable and non-potable combined):

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Total water withdrawal	606,281 Cubic meters	704,223 Cubic meters

Potable water use:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Potable water use	254,638 Cubic meters	469,717 Cubic meters

Start and end dates of the performance year and baseline year (or three-year periods):

	Start Date	End Date
Performance Period	July 1, 2018	June 30, 2019
Baseline Period	July 1, 2017	June 30, 2018

If end date of the baseline year/period is 2004 or earlier, provide:

A brief description of when and why the water use baseline was adopted:

The date sequence follows the University requirements for TEFMA. 2017/2018 was considered a normal year, in terms of rainfall, student attendance and irrigation use. It was also the year before the University began intervention and infrastructure upgrades to reduce it's potable water use.

Figures needed to determine "Weighted Campus Users":

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Number of students resident on-site	2,051	1,188
Number of employees resident on-site	10	10
Number of other individuals resident on-site	13	13
Total full-time equivalent student enrollment	54,904.16	52,246.30
Full-time equivalent of employees	7,361.90	7,077.20
Full-time equivalent of students enrolled exclusively in distance education	0	0
Weighted campus users	47,227.80	44,805.13

Potable water use per weighted campus user:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Potable water use per weighted campus user	5.39 Cubic meters	10.48 Cubic meters

Percentage reduction in potable water use per weighted campus user from baseline:

48.57

Part 2. Reduction in potable water use per unit of floor area

Gross floor area of building space:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Gross floor area	853,684 Gross square meters	848,662 Gross square meters

Potable water use per unit of floor area:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Potable water use per unit of floor area	0.30 Cubic meters per square meter	0.55 Cubic meters per square meter

Percentage reduction in potable water use per unit of floor area from baseline:

46.11

Part 3. Reduction in total water withdrawal per unit of vegetated grounds

Area of vegetated grounds:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Vegetated grounds	166 Hectares	166 Hectares

Total water withdrawal per unit of vegetated grounds:

	Performance Year	Baseline Year
Total water withdrawal per unit of vegetated grounds	3,652.30 Cubic meters per hectare	4,242.32 Cubic meters per hectare

Percentage reduction in total water withdrawal per unit of vegetated grounds from baseline:

13.91

Optional Fields

A brief description of the institution's water-related behavior change initiatives:

The University has a long-standing 'Stop the Drip' campaign running throughout all campuses. The campaign, via posters and stickers, encourages staff and students to report leaks (and other sustainability-related issues such as A/C units/areas that won't turn off, temperature irregularities etc.) The Campus Operations Services prioritises these issues to be fix as a priority 2 issue (priority 1 is restricted to risk to life/injury issues).

A brief description of the institution's water recovery and reuse initiatives:

Mentioned in OP22 - Rainwater Management

A brief description of the institution's initiatives to replace plumbing fixtures, fittings, appliances, equipment, and systems with water-efficient alternatives:

During the performance reporting year, the University opened a number of buildings with integrated rainwater tanks. These tanks are linked to the building water filtration system to accommodate the flushing of toilets and other non-drinking requirements. This reduced the amount of potable water drawn from the mains.

In 2019, University of Sydney commenced the roll out of the Hunter Hydrawise irrigation controllers to better control, understand,standardise and centralise the irrigation within the campus landscape.
Aims and objectives were to bring many outdated and old irrigation controllers into a more modern control system with remote access. The ideal that many, if not all, controllers could be ultimately monitored remotely from a central PC with water saving software that is weather based to save water and ensure that irrigation was only occurring when programmed or needed. Adjustments automatically occur through weather enabled feed in to the controller on a daily basis.
Estimated water savings since the implementation of the Hydrawise program are approximately 30%.

Website URL where information about the institution’s water conservation and efficiency efforts is available:

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Additional documentation to support the submission:

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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

Part 3: The total vegetative grounds amount of 166hec is the vegetative ground that receives watering. Omitted from this total is grounds used for farming or animal use (where no water feed systems were present) and ground not currently irrigated.