SWINDON residents are being asked to make a New Year’s resolution for 2014 to cut down on the amount of water they use in their homes and gardens by spending less time in the shower and taking advantage of some free water saving devices.

Thames Water’s Save Water Swindon campaign, which began in 2010, aims to educate local people on the need to use less water and how it can be done. When it launched, the town’s people were set a target of saving one million litres of water a day by 2014.

The award-winning campaign is a partnership between Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), Waterwise, Swindon Council, Action for the River Kennet and Thames Water. Swindon was chosen as a target area as it’s classified by the Environment Agency as “seriously water stressed.” This means all available sources of water in the environment are already in use including the River Kennet, which is a precious habitat for fish and wildlife.

Since September, when Thames Water joined forces with the Swindon Advertiser to promote the campaign, thousands of residents have requested free water saving devices for their homes, with combined savings of around 65,000 litres a day. This takes the total number of homes actively saving water in Swindon to almost 20,000.