Water Challenge

Wow, it’s already Week 5 of Food & Water Watch’s Water Challenge! Searching for new ways to save water, I started taking inventory of the items in my house where I have already saved a substantial amount of water.

While most of the appliances in my home are water-efficient, one remains that is not—the toilet. Although I have been keeping a bucket of water in my shower and using that to flush, there are times that I have to resort to water from the 5-gallon tank. Since this isn’t terribly efficient, I decided to research some ways to make the act of flushing less wasteful.

I found that displacing water in my tank is a great way of reducing the amount of water that it takes to flush. I grabbed two plastic one-gallon milk jugs, filled them up with water, and slowly lowered them into my tank. Due to a lapse in judgment, the first attempt created a surge of water that swooshed out of the tank. Yeah, displacement—get it? You’d think that I would have known better. Anyway, I found that the trick was to keep the handle partially pressed down as I slowly put the jugs in the tank to equalize the water level. Once both of them were in place, I noticed two things. The first was that the tank fills much faster because there is less tank to actually fill. The second was a faster flush time, due once again to the fact that there’s less water to actually flush. Now instead of expending between four and five gallons of water per flush, I am down to about two-and-a-half to three gallons of water! Great yet another way that I am saving water in my household.

So lets recap: I wash my dishes by hand, rinse in a dishpan, and use the grey water on plants and my garden. I have replaced my showerhead with a low-flow option. I had all the leaky pipes in my house replaced. I filter my tap water, as opposed to buying bottled water from the store. I take shorter showers, and do not leave the sink running while I brush my teeth or shave. I use run-off from the shower to flush my toilet. I have displaced water in my toilet to save additional water on flushes, and I have helped raised awareness of water conservation through my contributions to this blog!

You see-- small changes really do add up. I would love to hear your comments or stories of how water conservation has changed your life.

-- Jon Brown

As promised, I made a video blog for this week's entry.  Because I'm vain, I feel the need to make the following disclaimers:  My voice actually DOES match my lips in real life, but for some reason it didn't in the very beginning of this video.  Also, it was really hot in the bathroom when we were installing the new shower head.  So look for me to be glistening in that scene.  With that, please take a look at my video, and see how it incredibly easy (and cheap) it is to replace an aging, inefficient shower head!

Over the past several weeks, water conservation has really taken on a new meaning for me. This past week I thought of ways to conserve water, but tried to look at the bigger picture as far as how water is being misused. The comment on my last blog entry, which I had originally taken as a sarcastic one, was really eye-opening when I discovered that it was a fairly accurate statement. 90 percent of water waste comes from large agriculture companies. Some five percent comes from municipal golf courses (really amazing, I feel a little disgusted now as an avid golf fan and golf course-frequenter). The remaining five percent is used by people like you and me.  How then, can we actually make a difference?

The difference is in the small things—the seemingly minor adjustments we can make actually do have an impact. As Alex mentioned on Wednesday, we went to a screening of "No Impact Man" last week, and after the movie we took questions. Following the question-and-answer period that followed the film, a nice lady approached me just to say, "thanks, for getting this message out there!" She also told me that I’m making a difference, which made me feel a little bit better about this whole experiment. So while it’s great that I am making a difference, I wonder what else I can do.

I find myself looking at the larger picture now like Schindler did at the end of the movie "Schindler's List.” Like, “if I had only done this, then that would have saved 50 gallons of water…” With that type of perspective, I decided to put some pressure on my landlord to actually replace the leaky pipe under my kitchen sink. This has been a constant problem-- a slow drip, which we have been capturing in a small bucket. Every year, billions of gallons of water are wasted in our national water infrastructure. And while towns and states often lack the funding to fix those leaks, the least I can do is repair similar problems in my own home. Why live with a leaky pipe? Isn’t that after all, part of the sleeping dogs mentality that got us to where we are in the first place?

We need to change our mindset from the consumption-oriented one engrained in us since birth, to one that takes the availability of future resources into account. Our new pipe was purchased and installed by the maintenance crew, it took a mere 15 minutes to setup, and wow, no more leak. The repair of that leak was the pinnacle of my realization that we need to change, and that real change starts with us. We each need to do what we can, and together all of those little tasks return big rewards in the future.

So what have I done this week to conserve water? I have continued to reuse my excess shower water to flush the toilet. I have washed my dishes without running the tap. I have reduced water consumption when washing my hands. I have completely stopped buying bottled water, and I have started using a water filter, and I have fixed a leaky pipe under my sink. Ultimately, It’s not that you have to do something new every week, it’s that you need to be consistent with the small changes you have already been committed to over a long period of time.

‘Time to hear from you: what else should I do to save water?

Wow, this has been a long week--one that seems will never end. Due to various work-related demands, focusing my energies on the Water Challenge has been especially difficult. I am also discovering the limitations of my own abilities to reasonably cut my water use. Seeing that I rent an apartment and therefore have fewer wasteful habits to begin with, as well as less control over the changes I can enact, I’m finding more and more difficult to find ways to reduce my water use.

Of course, the new shower head is paying off. I am getting used to the lower water pressure, although I do find that I stay in the shower longer in order to compensate for that, so I’m not really sure if that measure is paying off or not.

My list of water conservation tips suggests that I " share water conservation tips with friends and neighbors." So, that is what I tried to do.

Since the best way to reach a large number of people is through email, I considered sending an email to everyone I know telling them how important it is to conserve water. Then I came to the conclusion that everyone already knows that wasting water is bad, and that in most cases water conservation is mostly a matter of taking knowledge and common sense and converting it into action.

Also, pestering your friends to turn off the faucet or not run the dishwasher can sound rather Stalin-esque. So instead of beating the proverbial a dead horse, I thought that instead of telling people about the best ways to conserve water, I would instead create a list of my own—of the worst ways to save water. Consider it my end of the week gift to you. I’ll try to present you with a more serious account of my water conservation adventures next week. 

10 Worst Ways to Conserve Water

1. Take a shower only when it is raining outside
2. Multi-task: take showers with your clothes on. Bring along soap, shampoo and a big bottle of detergent. Not only will this clean you, it will save you the hassle of doing your laundry.
3. Stop buying products that list water as an ingredient.
4. Don’t use your own water resources, borrow from a wealthy neighbor. Then you can run into a McDonalds bathroom with a glass, fill it up with water, run out of the bathroom with the glass held high and proclaim “Its Free,” “Its Free!!!”
5. Install a new low-flow fire sprinkler system in your workplace and then test it out!
6. Convince President Obama to outlaw children's wading pools, fish tanks and acquariums.
7. Speaking of which, you could also use vegetable oil on your Slip ‘n Slide.
8. Convince people that water just isn’t that healthy.
9. Replace your indoor plumbing system with an old-school outhouse.
10. Create new national holiday: Lick An Ice Sculpture Day

In my last entry, I wrote about how, because of my current living situation, I’m somewhat limited in the ways in which I can cut back on my water usage.  Renting an apartment means I don’t own any of my own appliances or have a yard, so many of the methods I see on these “ways to save water” lists don’t really apply to me.  I wrote a letter imploring my property management company to replace its antiquated washing machines with new, efficient models, but I’ve yet to hear back from them. 

So this week I thought I’d talk about looking to the future, when I will hopefully own my own place and have a lot more personal choice in how much or how little water I use. This past Saturday afternoon, some friends and I checked out an eco-living tour in a DC neighborhood so we could learn about what some homeowners are doing to save water. As proof, here’s me posing in front of one of the houses we visited.  There were about a dozen open houses showing off solar panels, rain barrels, and other power and water saving devices. 

We visited three of the houses on the tour and chatted with the homeowners at each about how they were using green technology to make their homes more efficient.  At one house, the owner had installed evacuated-tube solar collectors, which absorb solar energy and heat the house’s water.  We got to go up on the roof and check out the tubes.  The tubes themselves weren’t all that exciting, since they were, after all, just a bunch of tubes.  But there was also a friendly lady up there (on a roof deck, not just perched precariously on the roof) making cakes in a solar oven, and she let us have a piece, which was delicious. 
The last house we visited was the coolest, though.  The owners (I’ll call them the Johnsons- I didn’t actually get their names, but repeatedly calling them “homeowners” sounds like I’m writing for a real estate brochure or something) had a beautiful, tiered garden, several soothing fountains, and lots of lovely shade trees in their relatively small backyard, creating a peaceful, idyllic oasis in a crowded urban area.  Best of all, they didn’t waste any water on all the plants, trees, and fountains.  Several large rain barrels, which were connected to the house’s downspouts, collected all the rain that hit the roof, which supplied more than enough water for the Johnsons’ backyard.  Mr. Johnson also told me about a device they hope to get at some point that collects moisture right out of the air and condenses it into high purity water.   

It was great to see people going to such lengths to save water, and touring these houses made me want to buy my own place so that not only will I be able to take more control over my environmental impact, but I’ll also get to create a really cool patio and garden. 

Stay tuned for next week, when I write about my sure-to-be-disastrous attempt to install a water-saving showerhead (which I’m buying with my own money, since my landlord isn’t as nice as Jon’s, apparently). 

--Alex Patton

So, it’s been a week since my adventure to Target to buy a dishpan.

How’s it working out, you ask?

Well, I have to tell you: I really, really, really wish that I had one of those fancy double-bin sinks. I am happy that my contribution to nature is saving water, but I find that using this dishpan extends my dishwashing time by about 15 minutes every time I wash dishes. Now, with getting the pan ready, washing it to make sure it’s clean, filling it with hot water, and then actually washing my dishes, I am beginning to suspect that this particular water conservation measure may be a waste of time. I think that many of us waste so much water because it’s the convenient thing to do. On the up side, I have saved over 170 gallons of water since my last post.

Since so far, the only change in my life has been the extra time and effort that I am putting into dishes, I referred back to my water conservation checklist  to find other ways to conserve water.

I decided to try #10: For cold drinks keep a pitcher of water in the refrigerator instead of running the tap. This way, every drop goes down you and not the drain.

Ok, so time to get a pitcher. Hmm…glass or plastic?  As I wanted one that will be good for the environment, and being as uneducated as I am in environmental ways I figured glass has got to be better. So I bought a nice big pitcher from my favorite department store. I have been drinking non-bottled water for some time, but I have relied solely on a Brita Tap Filter that works as you run the tap. Now, instead of running the tap each time I need water, I fill my pitcher and put it in the refrigerator.

It seems to be working.

I am reaching for the tap less often. However, when the pitcher is almost empty I find that the “near-empty-milk-carton-syndrome” kicks in, and I tend to leave it there almost empty not wanting to finish it. As a result, I habitually gravitate towards the tap as if it were beckoning me back. Other than that weirdness, which I cannot explain, it’s been a great experience. I figure that by not running the tap for drinking water, I save about 6 gallons a week.

Earlier this week, I noticed that whenever my upstairs neighbor takes a shower, water leaks around the doorframe in my apartment. While it’s not ever fun to see water leaking into your home, it is also a huge waste of water, not to mention a great way of damaging an otherwise good ceiling. I called my landlord, who was so devastated he immediately called a contractor, and as of now, I am staring at the inner-workings of the water pipe system in my unit.

Another new development is that my landlord bought everyone in the building a new showerhead. That also happens to be #16 on the water conservation checklist, which tells us that if your shower fills a one-gallon bucket in less than 20 seconds, you should replace the showerhead with a water-efficient model.

So I now have a new showerhead. The catch is that I had to install it myself. Yep, so without the proper tools I decided to give it a go. Getting the old showerhead off was easy, but the new one required this crazy adapter. With little knowledge of how these things work, it took about five hours of my time to get the showerhead on. Now that it’s installed, I miss the high-pressure showers afforded by the one. The new showerhead is certainly saving water, as evidenced by the trickle of water it creates. The difference is life changing. I’m just not sure if it’s a change for the better.

So over the past week, I have switched to pitchers of water instead of water from the tap, I have a new showerhead, and unfortunately, dishpan hands. I find myself becoming more aware that it’s very difficult to separate myself from my water-wasting ways. Please tell me what you’re doing to save water!

I’m a few days into Food & Water Watch’s own Water Challenge, and I can report that my life isn’t really drastically different so far.  I haven’t been flushing my toilet as often, and I’ve had fewer beers at happy hours.  I already take pretty fast showers, so I’m not sure I could really reduce the time spent in the shower without offensive results.  I’ve been careful to really pack my dishwasher before running it, and I’ve been washing pots and pans by hand since they really take up a lot of space in the dishwasher. 

 So what does all of that really add up to?  The “If it’s yellow, let it mellow” plan, for example, probably averages out to about three fewer flushes per day (the restrooms in my office building have automatic-flushing toilets, so I can’t follow that rule when I’m at work).  Since each flush is 1.6 gallons of water, that means a savings of 4.8 gallons a day, which is 33.6 per week and 1752 gallons over the course of a year.  That sounds like a lot, and I suppose if everyone did this, it would add up to something significant. 

But that still doesn’t seem like a very big deal.  If at the end of this experiment my only real change was that I flushed less often, drank fewer beers, and was more careful about washing my dishes, have I accomplished anything important? 

In Jon’s first blog, he linked to this site, which lists 111 ways to save water.  I looked through these tips, and it seems like at least half them aren’t applicable to my current lifestyle.  I don’t have kids, a lawn, garden, swimming pool, patio, fountain, compost pile, a car to wash, or even houseplants to water.

 So what can I do to really make any difference?  I’ve decided that at least to start, I’m really going to work on getting my apartment building to replace its old, crummy clothes washers with modern, water-saving models.

  I had originally planned to speak to my building manager, but then I realized he’d probably just give me the brush off, since it’d just be an extra hassle for him with nothing to really gain.  So I wrote a letter to the property management company.  I told them about my participation in this challenge, and how it would be the right thing to do for the environment.  But I also told them it wouldn’t just be altruism - they’d save money over the years, and even better, they could tout the building as being greener than others.  That’s no small thing in D.C.  People like to feel like they’re making a difference, and many will choose to live in a building that has efficient appliances over one that does not.

I worry (and kind of expect, really) that the rental company will be myopic, and only consider the immediate cost of replacing the machines.  But if they surprise me and do make this change, it will save far more water than I ever could by any changes I make in my daily life.  According to the Multihousing Laundry Association (there really is an association for everything), an apartment building washer will be used an average of 950 times a year.  There are 10 washers in my building.  Older washing machines use 40 gallons of water per load; newer efficient models use about half that.

I know blogs containing multiplication are extra boring, but seriously, let’s do the math:  950 times 40 is 38,000.  Half of that is 19,000.  Ten washing machines means 380,000 versus 190,000 over the course of a year.  That means 190,000 gallons of water saved each year, which is a lot more than my several thousand gallons saved by reducing flushing. 

 I will keep you posted on what sort of response I get from the rental company, but in the meantime, if you live in an apartment building with older appliances, maybe you could write your own letters.  Imagine if thousands of other apartment buildings replaced old machines with efficient ones- then we’re looking at millions and millions of gallons of water saved each year.