Filling the sink with water to wash the dishes is quite a waste! Instead, dilute your dish soap (I squirt into an Ecover bottle about an inch of Ecover soap and fill with water) and squirt for a second or so on a good sponge. I prefer the Dobie sponge, which is really good at removing food from dishes with little effort or water, and laters well with little water loss.

With the soap and water already in the sponge, wash a sink full of dishes. Then, rinse with cold water.

Dobie: http://www.3m.com/us/home_leisure/scotchbrite/products/scrubbing_cleaning.jhtml

When I'm waiting for the water to get warm for my shower, I fill my watering can, rather than letting the water go down the drain. Same thing with doing the dishes.

Bathtubs are around 35 gallons. If you have a low-flow shower head (2.5 gpm) a 10 minute shower would save 10 gallons over taking a bath.

One of my other favoirte ways to save water is to place a clean jar in the tank of older toilets. typically this dosen't interfere with the operation of the toilet and it will save a pint or more on each flush. of course the gains aren't as much as replacing the toilet with a new one, but it's much cheaper and is something you can do right now.

My father used to go to the extremes to conserve energy/water. One of his favourites was to wash his hands/face using the bath taps with the bath plug on so to keep the water. He would use the water later to flush the toilet with the help of a bucket.

Ok, doesn't appeal to you? Then add a full two-litre water bottle to the toilet cistern. Every time you flush, you conserve two litres of water.

Esther

88% of water consumption in the US is for industrial and agricultural uses. Even if all individuals somehow didn't use any water whatsoever (impossible, yes), it would only reduce national water consumption by 12%.

thanks for your post, Joe! i was writing about how you can conserve water in your own home if, for example, you have a well and it might be running low due to this crazy weather here. those numbers are quite unbelievable though - i never did realize.

Here's a decent graph of it, Kara:
http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/circ/2004/circ1268/htdocs/figure14.html

Sweep instead of hosing off driveways and porches.

Use a spray bottle with water and a bowl when shaving.

You can also use the spray bottle with water to take a sort of sponge bath.

This is for extreem water conservation of course.

"88% of water consumption in the US is for industrial and agricultural uses. Even if all individuals somehow didn't use any water whatsoever (impossible, yes), it would only reduce national water consumption by 12%."

That's very true.

But I doubt that in most cities industries/agriculture and residential houses get their water from the same place, so if there's a water shortage, conserving water on the residential side definitely helps.

"But I doubt that in most cities industries/agriculture and residential houses get their water from the same place, so if there's a water shortage, conserving water on the residential side definitely helps."

Perhaps someone more expert can educate us about that.

With respect to cutting personal consumption, it would probably help to know the degree of consumption of different uses.

For example, the American Water Works Association says that 58% of home use is used outdoors.

http://www.awwa.org/Advocacy/learn/conserve/

That website has a lot of good information on how to conserve for each use and what to prioritize.

Here is also a chart showing how much is consumed indoors in a typical household:
http://www.consumerreports.org/content/Special/ConsumerInterest/Reports/Images/0206wat007.gif

"But I doubt that in most cities industries/agriculture and residential houses get their water from the same place, so if there's a water shortage, conserving water on the residential side definitely helps."

Agreed that conservation helps, but around here (South Santa Clara County, CA) residential and agricultural water is pumped from wells. Agriculture uses far more water, and pays rates almost 1/10th of what residential users pay. I try hard to conserve, but it upsets me to know that low costs and poor policies contribute to huge agricultural wastes (I spent several years working for our local water district, so this is a fairly informed opinion). It is also disturbing knowing that much of this water that is pumped is not replaced into the aquifer.

I am also very angry that the more you use, the less you pay.

Here in Quebec the big electricity users have lower rates than small users (and I suspect it's the same almost everywhere), basically encouraging them to use more than they would if they could save money by being efficient.

"Here in the Northeast we are experiencing somewhat of a drought – we haven’t had a good rainfall in probably a month, which isn’t normal. "

WHA?! Oh, right, your northeast of NYC, so you think you're Northeast. At least you didn't say New England.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hic/nho/index.shtml

It's frikkin wet up here.

Low flow oxygenating shower heads save a huge amount of water, also I am amazed at how big your toilet cisterns are. Here in Europe they are much smaller and we are obliged by law now to fit low flush systems in all new installations which reduces usage even further. Perhaps you need to campaign for this in the US.

For residential uses, why not use a composting toilet. Also, I was recently in France, where a number of faucets had foot or hand pumps in lieu of running water. Is there any way to get manually-pumped showers and sink faucets in the US?

For watering plants use a bucket to collect water from your gutters. Remember to cover the bucket because of the mosquitos that the northeast also is famous for.

Does anyone know how we can get hold of eco-friendly carwash detergent.

We have a visiting carwash service in the UK

Kind Regards

David simmyboy@runbox.com