June's Sustainable Living Tip
Here are two easy ways to conserve water. Outdoors, install a rain barrel. Indoors, install a more efficient shower head. Every year, you'll keep thousands of gallons of water from being sucked out of our groundwater or lakes.
More Facts About Water Conservation
- Maine annually receives about 43 inches of rain on average.
- You can fill up a 60 gallon rain barrel with a half inch of rain on a 20 by 10 section of roof.
- Rain water is naturally distilled water; it's the best water for your garden because it doesn't add salts to your soil.
- When you set up your rain barrel, make sure to put it on blocks or a stand so you can fill up a watering can from the spigot at the bottom.
- If you could collect all the precipitation falling on a 1,000 square foot roof in Maine (approximately the average size house), you'd have 18,000 gallons in a severe drought year and 36,000 gallons in an extremely wet year.
- The average residential account in the Portland Water District, Maine's largest public water supply, consumed over 70,000 gallons per year.
- According to the American Water Works Association, less than 16% of the clean, drinkable ("potable") water we use inside our homes is used for cooking or drinking.
- 26.7% of potable water consumed is used to flush toilets.
- 21.7% of potable water is used to wash clothes.
- 16.8% of potable water is used for showers.
- 13.7% of potable water is lost to leaks inside the home.
- A leaking toilet wastes up to 200 gallons per day.
- A dripping faucet wastes about 2 gallons per day.
- A seven minute shower with an older 5 gallon per minute shower head uses 35 gallons of water; the same shower with an efficient 1.75 gpm shower head uses just 12.25 gallons.
- Over the course of a year, if you take one seven minute shower every day, replacing a 5 gpm shower head with a 1.75 gpm shower head saves over 8,000 gallons of hot water.
- Conserving hot water saves energy as well as water.
- Toilets made since 1993 use 1.6 gallons or less per flush.
- Toilets made in the 1980s use 3.5 gallons per flush.
- Toilets made in the 1960s and 1970s use 5.5 gallons per flush.
- Toilets made in the 1950s and earlier use up to 7 gallons per flush.
- Assuming four flushes per day, replacing a 1950s-vintage toilet with a modern 1.6 gpf toilet would save 7,884 gallons per year.
- Putting a few inches of sand in a one gallon plastic milk jug (so it sinks) and placing the milk jug in an older toilet tank will save one gallon per flush, or 1,460 gallons per year assuming four flushes per day.
- If you are on a well and the power fails, you probably lose pressure and can't flush your toilets. Keep some water in 5 gallon containers for power outages and other emergencies. A good opportunity to fill up your emergency water containers is when waiting for your shower to warm up in the morning. Any time you run water waiting for it to get hot is a chance to restock your emergency water supply.
- Five gallon containers like the ones that our bulk cleaning supplies come in make great emergency water containers for storage in a basement or a pantry area. They have handles, close tightly, and have spigots for easy dispensing.
- Besides having some room-temperature water on hand, it's also a good idea to keep ice for emergencies. Keeping some frozen water gallons in your freezer actually helps your freezer be more efficient (ice keeps its temperature better than air) and will help keep food from spoiling if you lose power.
