http://www.h2oconserve.org/home.php?pd=index here's mine: Your total household water use is 903.77 gallons per day Your individual water use is 451.88 gallons per day
Your total household water use is 2,183.84 gallons per day Your individual water use is 1,091.92 gallons per day It also said: You might want to consider "letting it mellow" instead of flushing every time. By doing this, you.ll save ten or more gallons a day. LMAO! never heard the term let it mellow before
Your total household water use is 3,375.45 gallons per day Your individual water use is 1,125.15 gallons per day Ack!! That's really bad! -_-' 1000 gallons, just from eating meat/dairy?! I'm so glad I'm going vegetarian!! Thanks for the post Boogabaah! My mom and I both enjoyed this one!
Your total household water use is 605.42 gallons per day Your individual water use is 605.42 gallons per day I disagree where it says I should drink less bottled water. Drinking water uses a lot less water than say, bottled juice, but they don't take that into account. letting it mellow is gross i hate walking into a restroom with an unflushed toilet. Other than that they have some good/reasonable advice. I do need low-flow faucets.
Your total household water use is 1,829.30 gallons per day Your individual water use is 914.65 gallons per day I'm definately in shock by this! I didn't realize my water usage per day was so high. I so wish I could get a gray water system though... I was just looking them up and if it didn't require me drilling holes and what not, I'd do it. I rent, so once I own my own house... I'm definately making every effort to conserve water.
No need to change faucets, just change the aerator. Switch to a low flow shower head. When you replace the water closet, install a dual flush type. Water heater needs to be replaced, install a tankless unit. Harvest rain water for external use. Lobby for grey water recovery systems with your local officials. Bottled water wastes nearly as much water as soda and beer production but also contributes more to landfills that do not decompose as well as the production issues and pollution from fossil fuels.
Of course, environmental action is best when tempered with a dose a common sense. I live in a city where only outdoor water consumption truly matters. Winston-Salem, NC takes water from the Yadkin River and returns it a few miles downstream. It is a sizeable river, and there no other water consumers between the intake and discharge points, so any water that we use and put back into the city sewer system has no measureable impact on anyone else. State-wide and national conservation measures can waste financial resources by forcing people to spend money on things that are not helpful. This is true especially for coastal cities, where they draw from a large river, and the next stop for treated wastewater is the ocean.
With the overall shift to green products, a lot of "stuff" has become available on the net, for people to develop their own energy sources from home, through solar and wind power. I work in southern africa quite a bit, where these types of solutions are becoming increasingly popular, due to lower cost, and simplicity in setting these up. Never mind the fact that infrastructures are often short on energy reserves here. People need to see the value of generating their own energy, as it adds immense value tot he overall environment. Poorer regions of the world are proving this. In Europe and the US these products are readily available all over the net... many of them are not so good , some of them are the guys at www.cleargreenworld.com did a good review on some of the better home solar and wind turbine products. The key is for people to shift the mindset to action.... and use certain technologies, as simple as they might be,such as the proper home power generating system. They add value and slow the ripple effect on the environment and the dependency on "station generated" energy.
I use 150 gallons of fresh water a week for my entire home. We provide our own water from a spring that gets pumped into a holding tank to provide the house water via a RV type DC powered system. We take three to five gallon showers. THat does not count laundry as we do that at a laundrymat. I totally agree mikeza, but I want to add that to make that work we, as a whole, need to drastically reduce out overall energy requirements.
Good thread, Boogabah! I've often thought that fresh water will be the next great world crisis, and will make the oil crisis look like a picnic. It's particularly evident in arid environments like the one where I live, but it's a problem everywhere. The solution, it seems to me, is so obvious that it shouldn't even need to be said: desalination of seawater. In just the US, what percentage of the total population lives in a coastal city? 50-60% or more? The technology to create solar desalination plants is well-known. They do it in the Middle East. Why can't we?
Except in drought conditions, I don't think water conservation is a big priority in the eastern 1/3 of the USA, at least not yet (perhaps with the exception of Florida?) If global warming sets in in a big way, though, it'll make water shortages much more common. I think, at least in this region, we'd be better served putting energy into saving other things, like energy. But water use does use energy, I don't know how much, but since water is heavy it probably takes a fair amount of energy to pump it where it needs to go and treat it for household use. So there is that to consider. And in general, we shouldn't waste anything, but it seems to me the greatest priority in the wet part of the US is elsewhere.
Another thing to remember--irrigated agriculture is responsible for 70% of world water use. Global warming will increase the need for irrigation due to more droughts. Also, maybe we shouldn't irrigate huge areas in the Central Valley and other semi-arid and arid parts of the west anymore? We have plenty of good farmland in the eastern US where we could produce the same things.
