Finding ways to use less water in our homes and businesses will help nature - that is according to Alistair Chisholm, policy director at the Chartered Institute of Water & Environmental Management (CIWEM)

Speaking on the latest episode of the Waterfall water-saving podcast, Alistair discusses the relationship between water, people and the natural world with presenters Mike Keil and Karen Gibbs.

"Water is important to us, and vital to the natural environment," says Alistair, explaining that even though the UK is considered to have wet climate, due to population density, the country is looking at a water shortfall.

"That wetness has to spread around a lot of people," he says.

Water companies get licenses to take water from the environment for public water supply, Chisholm explains, and also leave enough for nature. The problem is that during droughts, the companies can apply to vary their licenses and extract more.

"The environment under those conditions does come second," he says, but public supply is not the only stress, there is also evaporation from soil during intense heatwaves - a combination of different factors.

"The problem is that when we need water the most, that's when the environment needs water the most," he says.

The Government has asked its infrastructure advisors whether the UK has enough water going into the future and the answer is that by 2050 the county needs about 4,000 million litres/day to meet the needs of the population.

"It gets harder to engineer our way out of water crisis," says Alistair, "and it gets more expensive, so it stands to reason we should look at the amount we're using and whether we can maintain lifestyles using a bit less."

Waterfall is produced by the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), an organisation representing customers in the UK. The podcast is about why we should save water and how we can do it best.

It is packed with useful hints and tips for anyone who uses water and is available on most podcast platforms, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google podcasts.