Challengicious Monday: More Indoor Water Reduction
>> Monday, May 31, 2010
Mondays are challengicious at The Conscious Shopper. Like last week's water-related challenge, this week I'm challenging you to:
Reduce Your Indoor Water Use
To complete this challenge, you can...
BABY STEPS
- Defrost food in the refrigerator rather than under running water.
- Turn off the water while brushing your teeth and shaving.
- Don't rinse your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Wipe them off with a dishrag or use the method I describe here.
- Reuse your towels multiple times to avoid creating extra laundry. Also wear your clothes more than once (not underwear).
- Don't use the toilet as a trash can.
- Take baths family style - i.e., Mommy and baby, Mommy and Daddy, small kids together.
- Compost vegetable scraps instead of using the garbage disposal.
- Replace showerheads with low-flow varieties and install aerators in your faucets.
- Upgrade your toilet to a more efficient model, put a bottle of water in the tank, or install a dual-flush system.
- If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.
- Consider a compostable toilet.
- Pee on your garden.
I'm happy to report that after looking back over today's challenge and last week's, I'm doing better on water conservation than I thought. It's nice to sometimes get a pat-yourself-on-the-back week.
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You have hereby been challenged to go green in a year without going broke! Check out the last challenge, or view the whole list of Challengicious Mondays. Sign up for my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, and join my "Go Green without Going Broke" group on Facebook!
- image by Joe Shlabotnik
6 comments:
looking at this list, i do manage a lot of things on here. the garbage disposal one....i have never had a garbage disposal and have always been mystified by them, so that's not an issue for me. i don't have a dishwasher, and i suppose it would be more efficient if i handwashed dishes with a soapy tub and a plain hot water tub but there isn't room in my sink/counter for both.
human urine is also much cheaper & more effective than Deer Off!!! tested & approved... :)
We would also like to get the dual flush toilet. Ours is older and uses too much water, a couple of water bottles in the tank helps. We also want to get another rainwater barrel, that makes a big difference when it comes to watering the garden. Otherwise, we do fairly well with keeping our water consumption down.
I'm always amazed at the people who wash their towels after they've been used once...by drying off a perfectly clean body!
I was just visiting my parents in L.A. + mom + I were discussing utility bills- DAMN! They have a "sewer tax" that is the equivalent of 3 months of my water bills AND the city just approved an 8% rate increase.
Funny thing is we also discussed the benefits of watering the garden with urine. I'm not quite there yet, but a friend of my mom said her garden is yielding the best crop ever.
@Shona - My garden is out of control without peeing on my garden, so I'm saving that trick for another year. But supposedly it works great!
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