A University of Melbourne study measuring office worker attitudes to using recycled water has found that 46 per cent of people surveyed were willing to drink recycled water.

Most respondents were also very happy to use recycled water for activities including flushing toilets and watering plants.

Further results showed that if people have prior experience with recycled water they are happier to use it further, indicating that implementing small steps to accustom people to using recycled water may help its uptake.

Dr Anna Hurlimann, from the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, surveyed almost 200 City of Melbourne employees and their attitudes to recycled water use. Some of the employees moved to the innovative new Council House 2 ‘green’ building in October.

“I was surprised that 46 per cent of people I surveyed said they were happy to use recycled water for drinking,” Dr Hurlimann says.

The Melbourne researcher – who has previously studied how Australian culture has influenced attitudes to water reuse – discovered that while there was little difference in opinion across demographics, attitudes differed across occupations and prior experience of recycled water use.

“In the sample I used, for example, engineers were less happy to wash their hands and drink recycled water than people in administrative or IT-related jobs,” Dr Hurlimann said, adding that more research into this area was needed.

The study showed that many of the office workers were happy to see recycled water used for things like cooling systems, flushing toilets and street cleaning.

“People were also happy to have recycled water used in fountains and other water features. If this was to happen and people actually knew it was happening, there may be a further increase in support for water recycling,” Dr Hurlimann says.

“For example at Adelaide airport the toilets flush with recycled water and when people see that it widens their exposure to the concept.

Dr Hurlimann notes that many peoples’ attitudes towards recycled water use came down to trust in water authorities, fairness (that everyone was having the same impositions), and provision of reliable information.

The results indicated further developments in recycled water use could be implemented in office buildings, but that more research is needed into social attitudes towards recycled water use.

Dr Hurlimann is now working on the next stage of her research project which will look at post-occupancy attitudes of people in the new ‘green’ building.

The first stages of her study appeared in Water, the Journal of the Australian Water Association, this month.