Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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Genting casino site uses smart technology to save 1.5 million litres of water annually
For businesses with large property sites, there are many concerns when it comes to the day-to-day running of buildings. From planned refurbishments and maintenance to cleaning contracts and energy use, each cost needs to be optimised and balanced against customer experience.
Many businesses have, as yet, struggled to find a way to dramatically reduce their water consumption in their property estates - despite many recognising this as a sustainability challenge.
Genting Casino's adoption of smart water meters has enabled it to understand more about its water use and how it can reduce consumption without impacting on hygiene in the washroom. Alongside immediate savings in water use in the washroom, the technology is also giving it insight on its water consumption elsewhere in the two-storey building.
Genting Casino's site in Sheffield city-centre is a modern 40,000sq.ft building a stone's throw from the town hall. Built in 2008, it includes 17 gaming tables and 20 slots with a late-night bar and Chinese restaurant. The casino hosts around 700 customers per day, with footfall peaking on Friday and Saturday, who use its 12 washrooms. Cannon Hygiene has supplied the site alongside Genting Casino's 40 other properties for seven years providing it with a wide range of washroom services specifically designed to ensure the optimum customer experience.
Cannon Hygiene approached Genting Casino with a trial of a new smart water meter product that would provide insight to help it understand water use across its Sheffield site. The specialist hygiene services provider combined this with adaptations to the casino's six male washrooms, fitting water management systems that significantly reduce water consumption. Working in conjunction with the water management systems, Cannon also fitted its Actiflow cartridges into each urinal.
"A common issue for lots of businesses when it comes to trying to reduce water use is knowing where to start," notes Clare Stevens, Genting's national account manager at Cannon Hygiene. "As a specialist in the hygiene sector we know that the washroom can be a key contributor. Our intelligent water management systems coupled with smart water meters allow us to work with customers to improve efficiency and prove return on investment."
The smart water meter on the mains supply measures a combination of time, flow and volume of water, indicating any problems with water flow and their monetary value. Immediately after installation, the real-time display (which is updated every few seconds) is used to detail consumption of specific areas.
Two weeks after implementing the smart meter, the Cannon Hygiene team installed its water management systems and Actiflow product in Genting Casino's six male washrooms. The Actiflow system is a small cartridge fitted to the waste outlet of urinals and is replaced every three months. Friendly bacteria in the Actiflow cartridge kill odour-causing bacteria and penetrate uric salts making them soluble. The Cannon Water Management System then flushes away the uric salts at controlled intervals, therefore preventing the build-up of uric scale, which is the main cause of blockages in urinal pipe work.
With the Actiflow bacteria keeping pipes clean and urinals smelling fresh between flushes, it reduces the amount of flushing needed - from up to 96 times per day to four times a day. Cannon Hygiene's Water Management System is also much more efficient than some others on the market, which can still require up to 30 flushes each day.
Through the smart water meter's analysis, Genting Casino found that the systems are saving on average 4,113 litres of water a day - amounting to more than 1.5 million litres of water annually.
Steve Gerrard, building services manager at Genting Casino, says: "We worked out that the water management systems are cutting our water bill by around £3,755 annually - far exceeding the cost of the system itself. And with a huge reduction in our water consumption we're more confident in our ability to operate more sustainably."
Outside of the washroom, Genting Casino can use the data provided by the smart water meter to understand more about its water use.
In its Chinese restaurants, hot woks are used to cook food in the evenings and flowing water is used to cool the woks quickly. Genting understood that it was likely that these would be using large amounts of water but was unaware of just how much. Similarly, ice machines in the bar use water and, to stay hygienic, any extra ice needs to be discarded at the end of the day. For both, Genting Casino can assess alternative systems on the market and adjust the water use knowing that for every change, the team can gauge return on investment and impact on the businesses sustainability.
A further added benefit of the smart water meter installation is that Genting Casino can be alerted to leaks or burst pipes long before water has done any damage to the premises. The online portal can be set so that a text will be sent to the building manager at Sheffield if water use rises beyond a predetermined level. The building manager also has the ability to shut off the water system remotely to significantly reduce damage should a leak occur.
It provides peace of mind that a leak or a problem with the plumbing can be spotted even during the middle of the night - reducing the risk of significant damage to the building and huge water consumption, both of which come with a large price tag.
Genting Casino is part of Genting Group, which has put sustainability high on its corporate agenda. The business aims to minimise its impact on the environment and achieves this by implementing robust and progressive systems that improve its operations.
Steve Gerrard adds: "We continually work to identify how we minimise our consumption as a business. This cuts across energy, water as well as waste and we have always believed that doing our part to operate sustainably should be core to our operations. The system that we have installed at Sheffield with Cannon Hygiene immediately proves itself as a route to us saving more water in our estate."
29th August 2019