What do we use water for?
The City of Montreal provides all of the water to the downtown campus. We use it for some obvious purposes, and for others that you may not have considered:
| Drinking | Hand washing |
| Cleaning | The pool |
| Flushing toilets |
Skating rinks |
| Landscaping | Ventilation systems |
| Cooking | Steam heating |
| Labs | Cooling |
| Showering | Fire protection |
How much are we using?
Unlike many large cities, Montreal doesn’t meter water usage throughout its area. Some individual boroughs and communities do, however water usage on the downtown campus is not metered.
In summer 2012, McGill's Utilities and Energy Management Office will begin determining the best way to meter water on campus so we can determine our 2012-2013 baseline consumption.
Work to reduce water consumption has also been an ongoing priority of Facilities, Operations, and Development, and their next step will be to assess water use more broadly (fixtures, equipment, etc) and develop a campus-wide water consumption reduction strategy. This will also begin this summer.
Both of these efforts will help us work towards the 20% reduction in water consumption that the province's Stratégie québécoise d’économie d’eau potable has set as a goal for 2017.