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National Water Conservation Campaign Launched

2 September 2019

National Water Conservation Campaign Launched

Minister for Energy and Water Management Joe Mizzi unveiled an extensive national communication campaign on water conservation during a press conference held at the Ministry earlier today. The WATER Be the Change campaign aims to deliver an effective educational and

awareness building drive on the optimized and efficient use of water resources, and to facilitate a cultural shift in people’s behaviour towards water conservation on the Maltese Islands. The campaign will run over three years and will target the domestic, commercial and agricultural sectors.

The Minister explained the main objectives for this campaign amongst which is the will to raise appropriate awareness on water consumption and conservation across all sectors of society. He outlined several benefits which the campaign will bring to our citizens, including the distribution of a water saving kit to all households, thereby helping them to better their water use. Furthermore, the campaign’s mobile unit will visit each town and village in Malta and Gozo where technical staff from the campaign will be able to engage with people and provide advice on how water can be used effectively in the home.

The campaign will also include a scheme through which a number of households and agricultural activities will be supported with physical interventions to enable them to become more water efficient. The selected participants to this scheme will become Malta’s ‘Water Champions’, by providing a tangible example to all on how water conservation schemes can be implemented in practice. The Minister outlined that this interesting scheme will be launched in the coming weeks.

The campaign will be spearheaded by The Energy and Water Agency which is tasked with formulating and implementing Government’s national policies in the energy and water sectors while ensuring security, sustainability and affordability of energy and water in Malta. Mr. Manuel Sapiano, the agency’s CEO explained that through this National Campaign the Agency will be initiating a wide engagement process with all citizens who want to contribute to a more sustainable future. He noted that everyone’s contribution, small as it may be, is important if we want to achieve major water conservation objectives at national level.

Through this campaign, citizens will be informed about how water resources can be used effectively and efficiently in order to ensure that we use our water resources in an increasingly sustainable manner. The campaign will target people’s behavioural traits and existing perceptions towards water, since small behavioural changes are of key importance for improving efficiency in water use.

Representatives from the agency gave a brief presentation outlining the strategic and creative thinking behind this full-integrated campaign. A simple but clear and effective message encouraging all sectors to be the change for water conservation, will be rolled out across all media platforms.

While the general themes of the campaign will aim to raise awareness on the importance

of conserving our water and using it wisely, the pre-launch focus has been on understanding people’s perceptions and attitude towards water and how they consume it. This to enable the message of

the campaign to focus on and address people’s perceptions about water and hence ensure that the campaign is specifically designed for the needs of our country.

This project is part-financed by the European Union under the Cohesion Fund – European Structural and Investment Funds 2014-2020.

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