Effect On Consumption
There is disagreement as to the effect of metering and water pricing on water consumption. The price elasticity of metered water demand varies greatly depending on local conditions. The effect of volumetric water pricing on consumption tends to be higher if the water bill represents a significant share in household expenditures. There is evidence from the UK that there is an instant drop in consumption of some 10% when meters are being installed. In Hamburg, Germany, domestic water consumption for metered apartments (112 liter/capita/day) was 18% lower than for unmetered apartments (137 liter/capita/day) in 1992. The municipal utility Hamburger Wasserwerke GmbH had installed more than 40,000 water meters in individual apartments of older houses since 1985. All new apartments had to be metered by law. Previously there had been only a single meter for the entire house in multi-apartment houses.
Read more about this topic: Water Meter
Famous quotes containing the words effect and/or consumption:
“The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)