Conserve water!

We’re moving away from paper and it’s over consumption to water for this week’s Reduce Footprint’s “Change the world Wednesday” challenge.

Looking at our water consumption is  a great thing to be checking out right now – the rains will come in April, but if the seasons do what they are supposed to do, a couple of months after that and we’ll find ourselves with hosepipe bans and droughts!

It’s been suggested we turn the taps on to just a trickle rather than a blast as well as investigating other ways to save water.

I’ve been thinking about some of the things we do here at Chez Green and I’d love to hear your suggestions:

Shower instead of bathe

I have to admit, I much prefer a bath to a shower, but I will tolerate a shower in warmer weather. Whenever someone has a bath here, someone else uses the water afterwards, so all is not lost. I would love to find a way to capture that bathwater after use and this is something Mr Green and I have talked about doing some time. We use a minimum amount of products, and those that we do are eco friendly, so I’m wondering if it would be ok to syphon the water off into a rain barrel after use.

Rain barrels

Talking of rain barrels, we have 4 of them dotted around the outside of the house. You can get hose connectors here so that you can then attach a hose to the barrels and water your garden. Plants far prefer rainwater, so it makes sense to capture free water for not only your garden, but your house plants too. You can also use rainwater for patio furniture or cleaning the car.

Recycle your veggie water

This is what Sunday lunch looks like here: Potatoes are par boiled in water; that water is drained onto the other veggies for steaming. That same water is then used to make gravy!

For myself, I deliberately steam broccoli and other greens in water, then use that same water for boiling rice during the week – I can’t bear to think of all those vitamins and minerals being poured down the sink!

Reuse

I use a hot water bottle every night and reuse that water on my houseplants the following morning where I can. I don’t have enough house plants to use the water every day, but every little helps … I’m wondering if I could give some of that water to my pet rabbit – what do you think? We always used to give our cat rain water as I felt it was better for her than tap.

Future plan

We have a grand plan to capture rainwater to flush the bathroom toilet. The bathroom is downstairs, single storey with a flat roof. The roof needs replacing next year, so we’re pricing up a tank, strengthening the roof, a pump and pipe work to put this project in place. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve done this yourself.

What about you? What every day things do you do to save water?