Tips for Saving Water: Easy Ways to Save Money and the Planet
Everybody whines about the cost of gasoline, but a far more precious resource (and one that is dwindling alarmingly in some areas) is water. Many people assume that clean, fresh water is plentiful and take it for granted, but the droughts of recent years right here in the United States has taught us that the scarcity of water is not just a worry for desert countries. Municipalities are beginning to charge more for water usage and put water-use restrictions in place. Before the situation gets particularly dire, start taking steps to save this precious fluid, because I guarantee you won't like trying to bathe in, drink, or wash your clothes in gasoline!
Easy
1. Don't run water while you brush teeth or shave, and don't let the hose run while soaping up the car.
2. Hand-water lawn or garden where it needs it instead of using sprinklers.
3. Only run the dishwasher when it's full (but do run it; uses less water than hand-washing). Same with the clothes washer. It is also completely unnecessary to pre-wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher-doing this can completely eliminate your water savings from running the machine!
4. When you put dirty dishes in the sink, don't run water in them just then--you will eventually wash your hands or rinse something off, and the water will land in the dishes and do double duty.
5. Wash car in automatic wash instead of at home; they recycle water.
6. When opening canned vegetables or fruit packed in water, pour the water off into houseplants, instead of down the drain.
More Dedicated
7. Install low-flow showerheads and aerators on all faucets (easy as screwing on a washer, and some cities give these away for free!)
8. Military shower - water on, get damp, water off, soap up, water on, rinse off. Kind of like the teeth brushing, but could get chilly.
9. Buy low-flush toilets (only 1.6 gal or less per flush) and a washing machine that you can set for lighter loads if you really can't wait to fill it.
10. Buy rain barrels to recycle water from your gutters.
11. Switch your landscaping to more drought-resistant plants.
Bordering on Obsessive
12. When taking a shower, after rinsing off soap, pull stopper to save the rest of the water in the tub. Recycle to water plants or add bleach to make a soak for whites.
13. That yellow-mellow brown-down thing.
So, remember to take drought as a personal challenge and beat the dickens out of it! If you can think of any other tips, please add them in the comments section, and the Earth and I will thank you.
This is my fourth eco-article today in celebration of Earth Day! Here are the others:
Earth Day Resolutions: A New Tradition that Helps Everyone
How to Celebrate a Green Mother’s Day for an Eco-Friendly Mom
Environmentalism for the Cheap and Lazy
Image Credit » http://pixabay.com/en/drops-of-water-water-nature-liquid-578897/ by ronymichaud
Comments
Ellis wrote on April 22, 2015, 8:31 PM
We have water meters and have to pay for what we use...have a feeling when everybody is metered they'll jack the price up!
allen0187 wrote on April 22, 2015, 9:02 PM
Great tips here AliCanary . My two favorite water saving tips:
1) Save water , drink beer (or any alcohol of your choice!).
2) Shower with a 'friend'.
Works for me all the time!
Soonerdad3 wrote on April 22, 2015, 9:19 PM
Water conservation has been one of the most difficult of all the natural resources to get people to get behind. We recently replaced our old clothes washer with one that gives us better control over the amount of water. I think the one thing that has made the biggest difference for us is that we don't water the lawn.
ViperGirl85 wrote on April 22, 2015, 11:11 PM
Oh I definitely practice some of these -like not letting the water run when I brush my teeth. Thank you! :)
bestwriter wrote on April 22, 2015, 11:27 PM
Those are great tips and hope whoever has read them here will follow them. I could add too. All the water from the bath, wash basin, kitchen is channelised to trees. I think using water from a bucket saves more water than a shower or bathtub. There should be no leaking faucets - not even a drop as drops make an ocean.
trufflehunter wrote on April 23, 2015, 6:58 AM
I think many of us are already guilty of number 1. Good tip going with number 4!
BarbRad wrote on April 23, 2015, 7:23 PM
I resent what the State of California is doing. The powers that be tell us what we can't do with our water while they sip enough water to supply three cities for a year out to the ocean to supposedly save six fish. Not six fish species, but six fish that aren't even economically important. Meanwhile, farmers who feed a lot of the country don't have water to grow crops. If we have a water shortage, the drought isn't the only reason. Much of it is also politically caused.