apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I lived in Monterrey with my parents in the early 70's. They talk about the years where the town had water restrictors attached to the town water in flow. If anyone went over their allotment, their water was turned off. We limited flushes, took quick showers (no baths, even though I was a little one), and did not ever water the lawn. Hardly seemed a "sacrifice". Now that I live in New England, I conserve water. It's not a crisis in California. It's a global crisis where we all need to do our part.

They need to stop those pipes from bursting and wasting thousands of gallons each time. That is how we can save water on a pretty grand scale.

The last time I drove through California, one of my thoughts was about the golf courses. We saw several of them and the color of the grass on those courses compared to the rest of the state was extremely different! I can't imagine how much water gets wasted just so all the golf courses can be super green! And what other kinds of places get watering year round to look just right?

Once you get into the habit of saving water, it stops being a sacrifice.

Here in Victoria, Australia, we have the "Target 155" campaign, which is urging people to limit their individual water usage to 155 litres per day (about 40 gallons I believe). My fiance and I have an ancient dishwasher in our rental apartment which we use for the majority of our washing up, both shower pretty much every day for long enough to feel nice and clean, and keep the garden looking good and green throughout the year. Our last bill said that our total per day usage was 69 litres, that's 35l or just over 9 gallons each.

I shower Navy style, turning off the water when I'm not underneath it (e.g. soaping up), my fiance leaves it running throughout, either way our shower is over the bath so we put the plug in, catch the water, and use it to 'bucket flush' the toilet. Water usage in the kitchen we don't really do anything special - just use what's necessary to be honest! Both in the habit from childhood of not leaving taps running anywhere in the house (exception being when we need hot water from the slow-to-heat kitchen tap, sometimes we remember to catch the cold for the garden/worm farm). And we collect the greywater from our efficient front loading washing machine in our wheelie rubbish bin, which then goes on the garden.

Once we own a house and can put in things like rainwater tanks, automatic greywater systems for all appropriate water (e.g. at the moment bathroom sink water just washes away), and maybe even a waterless toilet, we'll be set.

I see it as simple personal responsibility really. Yes, businesses, golf courses etc need to change their acts, but we should all also be doing good things ourselves.

I have a question on the other end of the spectrum. What do you do with excess grey water?

The only clean water we use is for cleaning us and for cooking, and we try to shower and clean efficiently to not use too much clean water. But plants can only take so much water. In the Mid-Atlantic we've had plenty of rain this year, and our townhouse's yard wouldn't need that much anyway.

We save the water from washing dishes, which goes into houseplants, the garden, and our container vegetable garden. We save the water from washing laundry, which goes either into the next load of laundry or the yard, and place it in a bucket to help humidify the house in cold weather. We have a bin catching the rain water from our compost bin, which we also use to water plants. I use cleansers that don't require a rinse.

We've only been here eight months, so maybe next year will be different with less rain. But does any one else end up with extra grey water just going down the drain? Does it just return to the water table and get re-filtered, as I seem to remember hearing, or is it completely gone forever?