What Can We Do To Save Water

With summer coming up very quickly, municipalities are setting tighter restrictions on water use.  Most of these restrictions relate to outdoor/landscaping, but there are many easy ways that each household could save millions of gallons of water each year.  Saving water not only will be beneficial to the greater community, but will also save you money.  Here are some tips that you and your family can implement today:

1. Check faucets and pipes for leaks. Even small leaks can waste up to 20 gallons a day.
2. Check your toilets for leaks. Put a little food coloring in your toilet tank.  If, without flushing, the color begins to appear in the bowl within 30 minutes, you have a leak and it needs to be fixed immediately.
3. Go to your local hardware store and purchase a tank bank. It’s a weighted bag that you put in the toilet tank that will save you .8 gallons per flush. 
4. Take shorter showers. A four minute shower uses approximately 20 gallons of water.
5. Turn off the water when you wet your toothbrush. Running water when your brushing your teeth is money down the drain. 
6. Rinse your razor in the sink. Fill the sink a few inches with warm water.  You’ll be able to rinse your razor just as well as that running water.
7. Only run dishwasher and clothes washer when fully loaded.
8. Minimize the use of garbage disposal. They require lots of water to operate properly.
9. Don’t have the faucet running when hand washing dishes.
10. Turn off the faucet when cleaning vegetables. Use a stoppered sink or a pan of clean water
11. Water during the early parts of the day. Early morning is better than dusk because it helps prevent the growth of fungus.  It also reduces water loss to evaporation.
12. Install water-saving shower heads and low flow faucet aerators.
13. Get a rain barrel for your shrubs or plants. A rain barrel collects rain water from your roof and is extremely useful to water flowers or shrubs.

These minor adjustments in our daily routines could make a huge impact on our water supply.  If every household in America would make a conscience effort to conserve just 1 gallon of water a day it would be 114,000,000 gallons of water.   And that is just a day.