Why Conserving Water is Important
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water conservation is important in numerous ways. Listed below are some tips on how you can conserve water in and around your home.
1. Wash your dishes in a dishwasher rather than hand wash. Hand washing dishes uses three times more water than the dishwasher. Also, only run the dishwasher when it is completely full. Same goes with your washing machine. Make sure you are running it with full loads of laundry. If your loads are half full, be sure to use the appropriate settings.
2. Collect rain water with buckets to water your plants and flowers. You can also place the buckets at the bottom of your gutters to collect rain water. If you water your grass with a hose, water at night. Most of the water evaporates before it hits the ground if watering is done during the day.
3. Fill a couple of water bottles 2-3 inches with sand or cat litter and place them in the water tank of your toilet. This will displace some of the water when the toilet is flushed and the tank fills back up with water, saving some water each time a person flushes the toilet. Also, if you place food coloring in your toilet tank, wait a few minutes and if you see the colored water appear in the toilet bowl, you have a leak.
4. Go around your house and look for leaky faucets in the bathroom and kitchen. You would be surprised how much water is wasted with a little drip. Up to 24 gallons, in one day!
5. You will use less water taking a shower than taking a bath. Also, turning the water off while you lather up will reduce the amount of water used while you take a shower. If you are a die-hard bather, you can use your bath water to water flowers or plants outside.
There are many ways you can conserve water, but if you can follow just a few, you will be amazed at how much water you can save. That will not only benefit your wallet, but also benefit the environment you live in.
Small Ways to go Green
- Image by dhammza via Flickr
In a society geared towards going “green”, this task can seem very overwhelming for the average person. The best way to “go green” is to take baby steps. Don’t try to do it all at once. There are very small changes you can make in your life that can make a big difference. There are many, very easy ways you can save energy. Below are some examples you can follow:
- A laptop uses a quarter of the power used by a desk top computer. If you shut down a home computer at night versus leaving it on and in sleep mode saves you $90 a year.
- A common stove uses the most electricity when it comes to cooking options. You can use a microwave, crock pot or toaster oven to use less electricity when cooking.
- If you wash your family’s laundry in cold water versus hot you can save up to 80% of the energy used to wash the clothes in hot water.
- If you insulate your hot water heater you can keep as many as 1,000 pounds of C02 a year from entering the atmosphere contributing to global warming. Also, turn your water heater down to 120.
-Installing a programmable thermostat that allows you to turn down the heat and air conditioning when no one is home or while the family is asleep can save the average family up to $150 a year.
- One word for going green in household cleaning – vinegar! Vinegar can clean out deposits in your coffee maker. A cup of vinegar will clean your washing machine, just run through a cycle without clothes.
- An easy way to save water is to change your shower head. Older shower heads can use 3 gallons of water a minute.
- Contaminants are brought into the house by the soles of shoes. Consider becoming a shoe free household. You can leave the shoes at the door and prevent a lot of environmental pollutants from entering your home.
You can take small steps that add up to big results to become a “greener” household.