Recycled Fish Stewardship Tip: Conserve Water

As I wrote last week, I'm very happy to be a part of the Recycled Fish team.

And, as promised, here is one of many Stewardship Tips that are available on their website.

THREE TIPS TO CONSERVE WATER
(see the original post here)

We’d all like to install Ultra Low Flow or waterless toilets to conserve water.  It’d be nice to redo our plumbing so that our gray water is recycled into our lawns.  These can be expensive projects and while they’d be nice, the fact is, you can conserve water at little or no cost.  Here are three simple tips to help you conserve.

1. Conserve water in your shower:
Install a low flow or ultra low flow shower head.  This is one of the easiest ways to conserve water in the home.  Most non-conserving shower heads will use 5 to 8 gallons of water per minute.  A low flow shower head uses 2.5 gallons of water per minute, an ultra low flow shower head will use 1.5 or less.

2. Conserve water in your toilet:
Install a displacement device, a tank dam, or an early-close flapper valve.  A displacement device is nothing more than something to take up space in your tank.  Fill a 32 ounce plastic soda bottle with gravel, cap it, and place it in the tank.  Tank dams, pieces of flexible plastic wedged into the tank on either side of the flush valve, reduce the amount of water available per flush by holding a small amount out of use.  An early-close flapper valve is a valve that will shut before all the water in the tank can flow into the bowl.  Early-close flappers often are adjustable, so that you can find a good balance between saving water and having the toilet bowl reliably cleared.

3. Conserve water your yard:
Eliminate all runoff.  Observe your sprinkler and make sure that water does not get on the sidewalk, driveway, or street.  Even the smallest overlap will send gallons of fresh water into the sewer.

Why it is important to the Fish:
By conserving the amount of water that we use, we reduce that amount of water that we discharge from our homes.  Water from showers and toilets is discharged into the sanitary sewer.  In some areas sanitary sewers are are combined with sewers that channel natural runoff.  A series of dams in the sewers prevent sanitary sewage from entering the watershed.  During heavy rains, combined sewers can overflow their dams and discharge raw sewage directly into a stream or river.  Needless to say, raw sewage in a stream can spell disaster for our fish.

Our Lifestyle Runs Downstream