Water Conservation: Little Steps = Big Rewards

Most people don’t think twice about their water bill until they start watering their lawn in the summer.  Compared to other utilities water is very inexpensive for the end consumer compared to their natural gas bill in the winter, or their electric bill in the summer due to running the air all the time.

When it comes to our fresh water from the tap have you ever thought of just how much time, money and energy it takes to deliver that water to you?  Just running your kitchen tap for five minutes can cause your local water treatment plant to use enough energy to light a bulb for 8 hours!

Last year we decided to take a look at our water usage in our home.  First stop, faucets.  We noticed our faucets were running 2 gpm (gallons per minute) or higher.  We swapped those out with 1½ gpm aerators.  Next, the toilet. It is an older model with that runs 4 gpf (gallons per flush), but we never thought about replacing the toilet. Quite honestly, when a toilet breaks it’s usually a trip to the local hardware store and $20 later it’s fixed.

Instead of replacing we decided to give some products a try.  We used the Green Irene Fill Cycle Diverter and the Toilet Tank Bank.  I also had an adjustable flapper that I had purchased previously but never installed.  After installing these toilet items, our toilet now flushes and refills faster than I ever thought possible.

We didn’t replace the showerhead at that time; we couldn’t decide what model to go with.  The next month our water bill came and I couldn’t believe it.  With just $20 and a commitment to ourselves to use our water smarter in our home, we reduced our consumption and waste water by an entire unit!  That’s 800 gallons!  This was during non-watering months so it was probably the best data we could ask for in our test. 

This is just an example of how all the little things add up around your home. On average, over the past year our utility bills are a combined 20% lower just by implementing some Green Irene tactics on top of what we considered already “Green.”

Chris Hughes, Minneapolis, MN
Green Consultant
http://www.greenirene.com/MNgreenteam
MN.greenteam@greenirene.com

5 Ways to Reduce Waste

Our homes are some of the biggest producers of waste. While there’s a lot that can be done with waste after it leaves our homes, there’s a lot that can be done at home to prevent waste in the first place. Waste is pretty much everything that we no longer want to use and is a result of something we used. It includes used paper, plastics, food, metals, cardboard, electronics, wood, packaging, water, and many other items we use in our homes. When you add it up, it translates to more than 250 million tons of solid waste collected in municipalities, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest assessment.

Everybody knows that recycling is critical to reducing waste, but what can you do to reduce waste generated at home in the first place? Here are five simple things you can do right away to have a big impact on waste production:

1) Avoid and Reuse Paper Products. Paper products are the biggest contributor to municipal solid waste, accounting for some 30% of all municipal solid waste when compost is excluded. To reduce paper waste: pay all your bills online, read your news online, and avoid having to print anything you can read online; reuse paper for packaging or as scrap paper instead of recycling it right away; opt-out of junk mail using MailStopper; and use reusable towels instead of disposable paper towels.

2) Compost. Believe it or not, food and yard trimmings are some of the biggest contributors to your ecological footprint (representing some 25% of all municipal solid waste). Instead of sending food and yard trimmings to the landfill, why not put it to use in your garden by creating compost? Green Irene offers two composters for outdoor and indoor application at ShopGreenIrene, so be sure to check them out. You can also donate food to local organizations that provide food to the homeless and very poor through food banks.

3) Conserve Water. As you may know, water is going to be one of the most precious resources this century as its supplies dwindle. The wasteful use of water is actually a big contributor to our ecological footprint, especially in water-stressed areas like the Southwestern U.S. As a result, one of the best things you can do is to help conserve water by avoiding bottled water; cutting shower time to five minutes; changing your showerheads and installing aerators (see ShopGreenIrene for these); and conserving energy (read here to learn why).

4) Stick to a List. When going shopping, make a list of items you actually need. Don’t be tempted to buy items that later on you won’t really use. A list not only allows you to purchase items you really need, but it will also save you money and space at home.

5) Recycle Electronics. Typically, homes tend to recycle the traditional items, such as paper, cardboard, glass, and plastic containers. Not too many think about electronics, and as a result a huge amount ends up in our landfills or shipped overseas. The problem electronic waste, or e-waste, is that it may contain very toxic substances that can harm human health. As a result, make it a priority to reduce electronic waste by first donating it for reuse (you can do this with cellphones and many other electronic items) and then ensuring that the rest is recycled (many manufacturers will take electronics back for recycling or reuse).

Reducing your home’s waste is an important step to going green and reducing your footprint. You can go further by learning about what else you can do to reduce waste and your general ecological footprint through a local Eco-Consultant.

Water-Wise Landscaping

As populations grow and droughts occur more frequently across the country, water supplies are becoming tighter and tighter. This has prompted a closer look at landscape watering. Approximately one-half of residential water is diverted to landscape watering, and much of it is needlessly wasted. Fortunately, there are many simple steps that homeowners can take to reduce water waste and get more from the water they use.

The biggest water user in the home landscape is typically the lawn, so it is the area that offers the biggest opportunity for water savings. Here are a few suggestions:

• Reduce the size of the lawn by adding or increasing the size of planting beds, gardens, and patio areas.
• Use locally-adapted turf grasses that have lower water requirements.
• Water early in the day, when wind and evaporation losses are their lowest.
• Water deeply, with less frequency. This reduces runoff, and encourages deep-rooted, resilient grass plants.
• Water efficiently by limiting over-watering, limiting watering paved areas, and using well-maintained equipment.

The opportunities for water-savings continue beyond the edge of the grass. An increasingly popular option is planting native, or well-adapted, drought-tolerant landscape plants. And you don’t have to go for the desert look to pursue this option (although the desert look can be beautiful). There are a wide variety of plants available in most areas that can get by with little or no supplemental watering. Keeping plants healthy also helps by allowing them to be more tolerant of drought stress.

It’s also important to group the plants according to their habitat needs: dry and sunny, shady and moist, or somewhere in between. This way, you can water the plant groups that need it and avoid those that do not, allowing plants to thrive with the amount of moisture they desire.

As with lawns, water can be saved in planting beds by watering slow and deep, efficiently, and early. Low-pressure drip irrigation systems are very effective at achieving these goals, plus they help avoid disease problems plants can develop with sprinkler irrigation systems.

Another water-saving tip for landscape beds is to use mulch. Mulch, most commonly wood chips or bark, help hold the soil moisture in, plus it moderates soil temperature extremes. As the mulch decomposes, it adds organic matter to the soil, improving water penetration and holding capacity.

The ultimate in water savings is to capture it for reuse later. Options range from the simple 55 gallon drum at the base of one or more downspouts, to more involved high-capacity cistern systems. Either will help you put to good use water that otherwise would be wasted as runoff.

For the most part, these steps are not difficult or complicated. Taking these steps will allow you to have an attractive, diverse landscape on a low-water budget. If you would like more details on these or other outdoor water-saving tips, please click here to contact your local Green Irene Eco-Consultant.

Make Your Home Water Neutral!

Commentary: Green Irene offers products and services that can help you reduce your water use at home, from low-flow showerheads and aerators to measures that can help reduce water use by modifying some items in your home. To learn more about products, go to ShopGreenIrene. You can also learn more by getting a Green Home Makeover with your Local Green Irene Eco-Consultant.

If you’re one of those folks out there who is suffering from a bit of carbon fatigue, then a post in the NY Times’ Green Inc. blog this week could either provide additional motivation for green projects or increased fear of another jargon-laden debate. Green Inc highlighted the growing trend of striving for “water neutrality,” as highlighted at the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul last week.

The idea is gaining ground within a group of companies looking to understand and reduce their water consumption, including Coca Cola, whose chairman has pledged to eventually balance out all of the water used in its products and manufacturing processes through conservation elsewhere (over 80 billion gallons worth!).

So, what would it take to make your home water-neutral, meaning that you don’t import any net water? If we include all of the water that goes into our food and the products we consume, then it gets ugly real fast. But what about our direct water use – showers, irrigation, toilets, etc.?

Now, this would require some significant changes to a home and to local building/health/safety codes, since the only way to go water-neutral is to reuse graywater and harvest and store rainwater. Both of these options now face numerous permitting and legal obstacles around the country. Assuming we could, though, how much rain would it take to provide a family’s annual water needs?

After some pretty simple calculations, it turns out that the home of a typical family of three could be water-neutral in climates receiving roughly 25″ of rainfall or more per year under the following assumptions:

• Three-person household;
• Rainwater captured, stored and reused;
• Graywater system used;
• Indoor water efficiency measures employed: low-flow showerheads, toilets, faucets and appliances;
• Outdoor water efficiency measures employed: smart irrigation control, rain shutoff, soil moisture sensors, climate-compatible landscaping.

This basically means that home water neutrality is feasible if you live in the Midwest, anywhere along the US Atlantic or Gulf Coasts, in the Northwest and in higher rainfall areas of the West and Mountain West (here’s a set of maps to review for your area). You just need to figure out how much rainfall your area gets annually, how much you can potentially capture for use, and how much total water your home actually uses.

Extracted from Low Impact Living.

Rosamaria Caballero Stafford
Co-Founder and the Original Green Irene

Save $1,400 Per Year: Give Up Bottled Water

Commentary: In addition to saving money by switching from bottled water to tap water, you can also save money by taking simple steps to reduce water and energy use at home. Contact your Local Green Irene Eco-Consultant to learn more.

Prepare for shock and awe: 1.5 million barrels of oil are used every year to manufacture disposable plastic water bottles for the U.S. market. That’s enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year according to an article in the New York Times.

And the bottling process itself wastes two gallons of water for every gallon of water that it actually packages. I was never very good at arithmetic, but I think that’s mathematical madness. It’s like the company president who reports that his firm is losing money on every sale, but that they plan to make it up in volume.

But here’s the thing that really gets my blood pressure soaring: Bottled water is 240 to 10,000 times more expensive than water from the tap, depending, I suppose, on how stylish the bottle is. At the same time, bottled water is actually subjected to less rigorous testing and purity standards than our tap water here in the U.S.

According to the Times, if you drink only bottled water you’ll spend about $1,400 annually to get your recommended daily amount of H2O, as opposed to 49 cents for a year’s supply of just-as-healthy tap water. Use the calculator at www.newdream.org to calculate your savings based on actual consumption, whether it’s just for a week during Lent or, better yet, for the whole year.

Green Irene can help you not only go green, but also save money along the way. Contact your Local Green Irene Eco-Consultant to learn how you can save water, energy, and money at home without changing your lifestyle.

Excerpted from The Daily Green.

Rosamaria Caballero Stafford
Co-Founder and the Original Green Irene

Is Your Water Filter Getting all the Bad Stuff Out? A Green Irene’s Story (Part I)

In its latest water quality report, New Jersey American Water states that water from my area (Somerset and five surrounding counties..Somerset, Union, Hunterdon, Morris, Mercer, and Middlesex counties) meets all standards except for the following:

- Tetrachloroethylene (discharged from factories and dry cleaners):  the highest allowable level is 1 part per billion (ppb), and the actual level found was 1.9 ppb;

- Trichloroethylene (discharged from metal degreasing sites and other factories): the highest allowable level is 1 ppb, and the actual level found was 1.9 ppb.

The report notes that “some people who drink water containing tetrachloroethylene and tricholorethylene in excess of MCL [maximum contaminant level] over many years could have problems with their liver, and may have an increased risk of getting cancer.”

The EPA’s water quality website says that if these contaminants are found at levels of 5 ppb or above, that the water company “must notify the public via newspapers, radio, TV and other means. Additional actions, such as providing alternative drinking water supplies, may be required to prevent serious risks to public health.” Needless to say, I was concerned!

We have a water filter in my home, but I had no idea if it filtered out these chemicals. So I called the EPA safe water hotline number listed on my water quality report, and they pointed me to the National Sanitation Foundation International’s Water Filter Database. This is a great tool to find out about all water filters and what they filter out (You can also call NSF International at 1-800-673-8010).

It turns out that my water filter does not filter out these chemicals! They are Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and my filter does not filter any VOCs. Fortunately, Green Irene’s 10-stage water filter does filter out these chemicals. I’m buying a new filter! If it weren’t for Green Irene, I never would have known to do this. Thank you Green Irene!

Note: Click here or on the picture above to purchase the 10-stage water filter from the catalog.

Sue Dorward, Authorized Green Irene Eco-Consultant

Bridgewater, NJ

http://www.greenirene.com/SueBridgewater

sue.bridgewater@greenirene.com