How to Save Water and Cut Your Bill, Too

Find out some simple tips to conserve water at home

Three-fourths of our planet may be covered with water, but only about 0.01 percent of that water is freshwater available for human use. Today, water conservation makes more sense than ever before. Following are a few tips on ways you can help:

• A five-minute shower with traditional shower head can use as much as 25 gallons of water. By installing a $10 to $20 efficient shower head with an on-off lever, you can reduce water use by as much as one-half.
• Conventional toilets use between 3 and 7 gallons per flush. For a four-person family, that can amount to as much as 32,000 gallons of water a year. Low-flush toilets, on the other hand, use less than 2 gallons per flush. Another alternative: Put a sealed, plastic container filled with water in the tank to displace water. That will reduce water use by 15 to 40 percent.
• Repair leaky faucets and toilets. About 5 percent of water water "use" results from leakages.
• You can save 5 to 10 gallons of water a day by turning off the faucet while or brushing your teeth.
• Instead of hosing down a driveway or patio, sweep the area with a broom to save as much as 50 gallons of water for every 5 minutes the faucet is running.

Source: Homemade Money
by the Rocky Mountain Institute staff,
Snowmass, Colorado, 1995;
phone: 970-927-3851