Sustainable pub : water
Creators: name: Li, Terek
name: Lee, Ming
name: Iruretagoyena, Dylan
name: Carbol, Milo
Publisher: name: The University of British Columbia
Year: 2016

description: Our project name is Sustainable Pub: Water, the ultimate goal of this project is how can the water usage of the Koerner Pub be reduced. The stakeholder, Tim Yu, has placed three constraints on the final outcome and conclusion of this project. These constraints are: low capital expenditures, no restructuring of the building and to follow government’s health and safety regulations. Due to these constraints, the team has decided to design new water usage practices for the Koerner Pub, by doing so the water usage can be reduced without the need of any new investments other than the necessary training required for the pub employees. The team also agreed that instead of deciding which practices are most suited for the Koerner’s Pub, we will present a list of possible practices with their pros and cons to the stakeholder and let him decide whether or not to implement them. All of the team members agreed that the best method to design new water conservation practices was to survey other restaurants and learn if they had any practices that can be implemented at Koerner’s Pub. The team believed that in order to get the most accurate results it would be necessary to survey workers in different positions, to ensure that they are familiar with their stations. Therefore, the survey was constructed for three different positions within a pub style restaurant: bartender, kitchen staff and manager. Out of the twelve copies of survey that were sent out, only five restaurants responded. After combining and analyzing the results, the team found that none of the restaurants have water conservation policies and neither do they have sustainability in mind. Albeit these restaurants said that they do not deliberately implement water conservation practices, the restaurant’s kitchen staff and bartenders still gave us interesting practices that can contribute to water conservation. There are four practices that our team believes could be implemented by the Koerner’s Pub. The first practice is to scrape clean dishes instead of rinsing them before putting them into the dish water. This is a rather simple procedure that has significant impact on water conservation. The positive aspect of this practice is that it is environmentally friendly, while the negative aspect is the requirement of more labour hours The second water conservation practice that our team designed is to serve customers water only when asked. As we learned from the survey, not all customers drink the water that was served. By serving water only when asked there is a higher likelihood that the water will be consumed and not wasted. This will also reduce the number of cups that need to be cleaned. This practice conserves water to two stages, however, one downside is that customers may dislike that fact that they are not immediately served water. A simple solution to this problem is to ensure that waiters ask the customers for their drink orders in a timely manner. The final two water conservation practices are related to the disposal of ice. According to the surveyed restaurants, they all clean up and melt any left over ice cubes in the ice wells before closing every day, this is to prevent any bacteria growth. Simply throwing ice out at the end of the night is clearly a wasteful practice. Therefore, we propose that the ice not be thrown out but put to use in other ways. The first way to use the ice cubes is to water plants. This practice eliminates the need to use fresh water on plants and reduces the amount of ice that is thrown out. The practice has no downside and conserves a noticeable amount of water if performed on a daily basis. If there is still left over ice, then it can be dumped outside beside the plants. In our survey, we found that restaurants tend to dump left over ice into a sink and then turn on hot water to melt the ice faster. Our team finds this practice unnecessary because it creates water consumption that can be avoided. Koerner’s Pub can train its employees to clean the ice well only when it is close to the closing time. By dumping the leftover ice outside, nature’s energy is used to melt the ice, and the process does not affect the operation of the restaurants at all. The downside of the practice is that it takes more labour hours to transport the unused ice outside, and that the dumped ice creates a potential hazard as the melted ice water might cause people to slip. Therefore, the team recommends that Koerner’s Pub to place a “slippery floor” sign next to the dumped ice or to dump the ice in a responsible location. It should be noted that according to the stakeholder, the Koerner’s Pub does not have access to the water usage bill. Therefore, it is difficult to do a quantitative analysis of these practices to see exactly what impact they would have on water consumption. However, the team strongly believes that if implemented, these practices will reduce water consumption in the long run. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”