Turkey mandates rainwater harvesting for new buildings

• Rainwater for toilets and gardens
• Public buildings must process grey water
• Incentives needed for existing buildings

Turkey has tightened construction rules to ease pressure on dwindling water resources, requiring many large new buildings to include rainwater harvesting and water recycling systems.

Under the rules set to come into force on January 1, all new buildings with an area greater than 2,000 square metres, private buildings with a roof footprint greater than 1,000 square metres and all public buildings must have rain catchment capacity on their roofs. 

A filtration system and plumbing to allow captured rainwater to be used for garden irrigation and use in flushing toilets must also be installed, along with water storage based on building size and the average rainfall in each province. 

Apart from mandating the harvesting of rainwater, the new regulations – drafted by the ministry of environment, urbanisation and climate change – also call for some new builds to install grey water processing, which uses water from sinks, showers and baths to fill cisterns. 

Buildings that will be required to have grey water recycling systems include hotels and dormitories with more than 200 beds, shopping malls exceeding 10,000 square metres and public buildings of more than 30,000 square metres.

The ministry estimates that the conservation and recycling measures will result in saving more than 10 million cubic metres of water annually. 

The need to strengthen Turkey’s water management is growing as the country is already rated as “water stressed” according to a series of studies, and will experience water scarcity – insufficient resources to meet its consumption requirements – by 2030. 

The push to promote water harvesting and recycling is a positive one that will support domestic production in the sector, according to Ozan İşcan, a manager at Floteks Subterra Group, a technology company based in the western city of Bursa. 

“This issue may be new to Turkey but abroad in Europe it is very well known,” İşcan told AGBI. “However, this current move will boost the sector domestically.”

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A further boost would arise if – as is the case in many European countries – the state were to offer incentives to owners of existing buildings to install water conservation technology, said İşcan.

“In Europe you have incentives even for individual houses saying that if you collect rainwater for your garden or grey water the state will gradually cut what you spend on the technology from taxes,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we do not have that in Turkey yet, and the new regulations only made large-scale roof areas and public buildings compulsory, but gradually it will come down to smaller-scale buildings.”