The Maia City Council launched a new water-billing model with an approach described as “innovative, pedagogical and sustainability-oriented” that aims to “help the consumer” understand how they use that resource, it was announced today.
In a statement, that municipality in the Porto district explains that the Water-Conscious Bill replaces the “traditional model” and aims to “help each consumer better understand how much water they use and how they can contribute to a more sustainable management of this essential resource’.”
Beyond the usual billing data, the text states, “it provides environmental performance indicators and information on comparative consumption, allowing, for example, to understand how many people the consumption recorded on the bill would correspond to, using as reference more sustainable usage patterns.”
The municipality wants this new billing model to be an “instrument of information and awareness, which helps each family recognize its habits, identify saving opportunities and adopt more responsible behaviours, not only in water consumption but also in the management of the urban water cycle, particularly with regard to wastewater sanitation.”
According to the municipality, the Water-Conscious Bill arose from a process of community participation and involvement, having been cocreated from the ideas, concerns and contributions gathered in workshops of the Participatory Laboratories for Water Management, held in the ten parishes of the council in 2025.
The initiative forms part of the education and citizenship program “We Are Water,” through which Maia’s Municipal Water and Sanitation Services promote citizen involvement in building solutions for a more efficient and sustainable management of water resources.
