Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Water Conservation

When some people find out that I’m trying to conserve water they find that strange, especially when they hear that I don’t pay for water. Why would you want to conserve water if you don’t have to pay for it.

"Growing populations will worsen problems with water," says Peter H. Gleick, an environmental scientist at the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, a research organization in California. He fears that by the year 2025, as many as one-third of the world's projected 8.3 billion people will suffer from water shortages.

While NASA and the World Health Organization have different figures (4 billion people will face water shortages by 2050) it’s still disturbing to me. It’s important to note that only 2.5 percent of the worlds water is fresh water. If you were to Google “why conserve water” you would find there are a number of reasons to do so. Since it’s not my intention to convince anyone to conserve water I will leave it at that.

What am I doing about it? Since it’s estimated that 75% of the water we use is in the bathroom I started there. I made my toilet “low-flow”. They may not be accurate but I purchased a toilet tune-up kit that allows me to adjust the amount of water held in the tank. After a little fiddling I was able to adjust it so it has just enough water to flush solid waste. I estimate this saves roughly 30% of water for each flush. Since I no longer flush the toilet every time I would estimate I’m using less than half the water I used to in my toilet.

I recently purchased a low-flow shower head that uses 1.2 gallons of water per minute. It also has a “pause” button that will stop the water flow while you soap up (for those Navy showers). It hasn’t arrived yet but I received an email this morning stating that it’s already shipped. The only thing left to do for water conservation in my bathroom is to get an aerator for the sink faucet.

The bathroom isn’t the only place I’m conserving water. I’ve started combining loads of laundry and I’m only using the “extra large load” setting when I really have an extra large load. If you’ve read my previous posts you might already know that I’ve started filling the sink in the kitchen to rinse my dishes rather than keep the water running.

I wonder how much water I’m actually saving.

1 comment:

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