How to save water: 7 ways to spend less on water and take care of the environment
How to save water? Judicious use of this resource not only saves a considerable amount of money, but also benefits the environment. How can you reduce water consumption in your home and garden?
Water can be saved for various reasons. However, they don’t matter, because everyone benefits in the end. So you can start doing it for the good of the planet or to save money, and everyone will still benefit. Before you do, a key question may come up. If you’re wondering how to save water, there are many ways to do it. Plus, many of them don’t involve huge changes in our lives. With the method of small steps, you can support the planet and the wealth of your wallet.
Drink tap water
In many countries in the world, tap water is drinkable, but if you don’t quite trust such solutions, you can also use special filters, which have recently become very popular. But how does drinking tap water instead of bottled water actually save money? Putting aside the financial issues and the fact that tap water is much cheaper than bottled water, it takes the consumption of as much as 3 times more liquid than its final content to make the product available in stores. All because of the need to create packaging and labels, which in general we don’t need for anything, but only pollute the environment. Such a solution is a great option for people who want to save water not only for financial reasons, but also for the state of the environment. The use of filters avoids throwing away huge amounts of plastic every month, and the cost of replacement cartridges is also much lower than in the case of classic bottled water, to which the price of this harmful packaging is added in addition to the markup and production costs.
What if the tap water in your city is not tasty? Then you can opt for several options. The first and by far the easiest is to add lime or lemon to your drink. For this purpose, mint and basil, which is usually associated only with dishes containing tomatoes, also work well, but nothing could be further from the truth. If you get tired of plain water with such additives, the liquid directly from the tap can be filtered and then boiled. In this way you will protect your kettle from scale deposits and prepare tea or coffee. Tap water goes well with self-prepared fruit syrups, which only need to be diluted and you’re done. You also don’t have to limit yourself to using it only at home. All you need is a reusable bottle that you can take with you.
Take an interest in the toilet flush
How can we save water? The first way in our list is closely related to the bathroom, and in fact the toilet bowl itself. Nowadays on the market you can find many cisterns that take care of lower water consumption. Some of them have a “stop” function, while others are equipped with a saving division, that is, they give a choice between 3 and 6 liters of water. Yes, that’s how much liquid we use during one flush, and that’s assuming we use eco-friendly cisterns!
Another tip that connects to flushing water down the toilet is also the issue of throwing cotton balls, ear sticks, paper wrappers or rolls of used toilet paper into the toilet. Such products require flushing with much more water than regular toilet paper, which is light, thin and dissolves quickly in water. For this reason, it is better to put the garbage in the trash rather than the toilet bowl. Not only because of the later difficulty of cleaning the sewage but also your own economy. The most frugal also collect water from howling hands and it is with this that they pour over the toilet seat. This option requires more commitment, but goes on to save the most water and money.
Take a shower instead of a bath
Why is a quick shower better than a long bath? If you want to save water, because you need to reduce the value of your bills or you rely on ecological solutions in your life, a simple experiment will make everything clear. Just plug the bathtub drain with a cork and wash yourself in it as if you were taking a shower. The amount of water you will use may surprise you. After all, it will turn out that for washing we only need about 1/4 of the amount of water we use when bathing.
Sticking to iron calculations, we can assume that a classic bathtub with a length of 160–170 centimeters. It will hold about 170 liters of water. For a quick shower, therefore, we will use about 40 liters of water. Considering that we wash every day it makes a huge difference to our wallet and the environment. A simple calculation will suffice. If we don’t use 63876 liters for a year, and instead use 14600 liters, we will manage to save almost 50,000 liters of water per year. If we juxtapose this with the current water rate, we may have money left over for quite a lot of pleasure. In addition, we emphasize that we are talking here about only one person and only one activity performed by him every day. If you don’t have a bathtub, you don’t have to invest in a bathroom renovation at all. It may be enough to insert a screen or hang a curtain that will allow you to use it like a shower.
Turn off the tap
This time a trivial tip on how to save water in your own home. However, it’s not about the classic turning off the stream while brushing your teeth or soaking your toothbrush alone. You can also turn off the water while washing your hands. It is better to wet them slightly, turn off the tap, use soap, and only at the very end unscrew again and rinse. The same issue applies to shampoo. In a situation where you are going to wash already wet hair, you do not need the accompaniment of flying drops at all. At this time, the water can be turned off, and the shampoo can be held on the head for a little longer than 10 seconds, so it will be able to better wash the scalp.
It’s also a good idea to turn off the water when washing dishes. A good habit is to wet a sponge, turn off the tap, scrub a few plates and glasses and then rinse them all at once. We don’t need the stream running as we rearrange more dishes, scoop up liquid or try to wash away dried food residue. This principle can also be applied to other activities using running water. A dishwasher also provides huge water savings, but its purchase can be thwarted by financial or logistical considerations. Therefore, if you don’t have the funds to buy a dishwashing machine or don’t have the space for one in your kitchen, it’s worth considering the previous water-saving tips.
Rethink your work in the garden
How to save water in the garden? Ways to take a sensible approach to this issue are really many. First of all, if you don’t add salt to the water when cooking, you can reuse the liquid to water your plants. A great idea to save water is also to collect resources, which we get directly from nature and do not have to pay for them at all. When it rains, it’s additionally a good idea to collect rainwater, which you can then use to water plants under the roof or those inside the house. If a dry period comes after a downpour, the collected water will also allow you to water at least part of the garden before running the sprinkler.
Water in the garden can also be saved in several other ways. An excellent solution is to spread bark or pebbles on the ground, which will block the rapid evaporation of water from the soil during warmer days. Then you won’t have to water your plants as often as you would without applying this insulating layer. There are also special species of flowers and shrubs that prefer smaller amounts of water, so you can also save water. In addition, when washing vegetables or even peeling mushrooms, you do not need to pour out the collected liquid. It is usually full of sand and moss or grass residue, but when watering the garden it will work great. Once collected water for repeated use, it’s a double win.
Choose the right taps and shower faucets.
Some water-saving changes are completely unnoticeable. For this reason, it is worth paying some attention to them. Sometimes one good purchasing decision can do a lot of good for our wallet and the environment. Besides, the expense will quickly pay for itself and all further savings will only be a plus for our finances. What kind of faucet or shower handset we choose matters not only for the aesthetic issues of our kitchen or bathroom. The superiority of single-lever faucets is already pointed out at the start. Without twisting and adjusting the knobs for the right pressure or temperature, you manage to reduce water consumption every time. For this, it is still worth reaching for an aerator. This is a cap on the tap with a strainer, which is designed to aerate the water. Thanks to this we have the impression that even more water is flowing than before, although in reality we use much less water. Savings can be made not only at the sink or basin. There are also water-saving showerheads.
Convert to vegetarianism or veganism
Our last suggestion on how to save water may seem quite radical. What does eating meat have to do with saving water? As it turns out, quite a lot. It’s not a matter of reducing the amount of liquid used at home, but a phenomenon far more distant from our daily lives and directly affecting the environment. Few people who buy meat in supermarkets realize how much water is consumed in its production. If you don’t want to switch to a plant-based diet, a big step would be to limit meat. For example, eating it only once a week.
Vegetarianism and veganism is not only an ethical way of life regarding the fate of the animals themselves, but also a conscious approach to industrial water use. More than half of the water used in the United States is not taken by households at all. It is consumed by raising animals for slaughter. About 21,000 liters of water must be used to produce 1 kg of meat, while growing 1 kg of wheat uses only 210 liters of water. That is, as much as 100 times less! These values depend mainly on the species of the plants themselves, but it is generally accepted that a vegetarian diet contributes to the consumption of about 10 times less water per day than one based on meat consumed at least once a day. And yet no one eats meat exclusively, and it usually accounts for a small fraction of such a diet.
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