Simple Ways to Conserve Water Around Your Home
Conserving water in your home won’t just help reduce your utility bills each month, but can also help protect the environment. Conserving water can help reduce soil saturation, prevent water pollution, protect local watersheds and avoid overloading your city’s sewer system.
Check out these easy tips for water conservation in and around your home.
- If you have leaky faucets in the kitchen or bathroom, get them fixed. It may not seem like much water is coming out with each drop, but over days, weeks, months and years, the water loss adds up.
- Don’t “waste” toilet flushes. Some people flush cigarette butts, makeup remover pads or facial tissue. These are unnecessary flushes, and each flush may waste up to five to seven gallons of water.
- Replace your shower heads. Water-saving shower heads are available in most hardware stores. These fixtures are fairly easy to install.
- Check your toilet to see if it is leaking. One simple way to see if your toilet has a leak is by putting a few drops of food coloring in the toilet’s tank. If you see any of the colored water in the toilet’s bowl after 30-60 minutes, this is a good indication that there is a leak somewhere in the system. The solution may be as simple as replacing the flapper.
- Reduce your showering time. Even a 4-5 minute shower uses 20-40 gallons of water.
- Only wash full loads of clothes, and only wash full loads of dishes. Get the maximum use out of water these appliances use.
- Consider insulating your home’s water pipes. This helps you get hot water faster for showers, baths, doing dishes, washing clothes and so on. You won’t waste as much water waiting on it to heat up.
- Only use your garbage disposal when necessary. For these appliances to work properly, they need to be used in conjunction with water. As an alternative, you may want to start a compost pile.
- Turn the water off when you are brushing your teeth. After you wet your toothbrush and start to brush, shut the water off until you need to rinse.
- Reduce water use when shaving. Some people shave and rinse their razor off after every stroke with running water. This wastes water. You can clean the razor off just as well with a few inches of warm water in the sink.