Save water … indoors
Check your home for hidden leaks. Take a reading from your water meter before everyone leaves the house for several hours (and no water will be used). Then check the meter again when you get home, before anyone uses any water. If your new reading is higher, you’ve got a leak somewhere.
A faucet that drips just once per second will waste 2,700 gallons per year. Hello? Fix that. Pronto.
You know those little screw-on screen things on faucets? They’re aerators – and you should have them on your faucets because they reduce water usage. You can get them at the hardware store. Is yours all crusty? Unscrew it, then soak it in distilled vinegar overnight. All clean! (Can’t get it off? Put some distilled vinegar in a baggie and tie it up around the aerator. It will unscrew in the morning.)
Install low-flow showerheads. This is pretty easy and makes a big impact.
Limit shower time. Maybe not to the 3-minute military showers, but really, you don’t need a long shower every day. Put a small timer in the bathroom, and set it for 5 minutes. Then hop into the shower, and see if you can get out before the timer goes off.
Replace an old toilet with a water-saving model. Older toilets waste as much as 14,000 gallons per year vs. new water-saving models. Until you have the resources to replace it, put a plastic jug of water or two in your toilet tank to displace some of the water there. Instant efficiency.
Showers use less water than baths. While we love our baking soda baths here at Marilu.com, it’s not prudent to take one every day. If anyone has suggestions for reusing baking soda bath water (gray water with a sodium content), we’d love to hear them.
Turn off faucet while you shave or brush your teeth. Teach your kids the same conservation ethic.
Dishwashers are generally more efficient than hand-washing your dishes. Make sure to run it only when it’s full, and don’t bother rinsing dishes first in the sink. (Research shows this doesn’t help!)
Stop using the garbage disposal. It needs a lot of water to work and wastes perfectly good compost! Compost all non-animal food scraps plus egg shells.
Keep a pitcher of drinking water in your fridge, so you don’t have to run the faucet to get cold water. Install an instant hot water tap on your kitchen sink so you don’t have to wait for the faucet to get hot.
Run the washing machine for full loads only. A small load uses proportionally more water. If it’s a lightly soiled load, use the shortest wash cycle.
Use bath towels for several days before washing them. Presumably, you’re clean when you use them, right?
Buy an energy-efficient front-loading washing machine when you have to replace your current one. Compare the cost to run a less efficient model, and you’ll see the higher initial cost will be okay in the long run.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Green living.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
