This post is going back to an earlier task, water waste, because I notice we are indirectly wasting water without even thinking about it.  This comes from this weekend from when I was doing laundry.  I do notice how Ben and I both often times leave clothes on the floor because we are really tired and decide to do it the next day; typically we don’t even pick up the clothing then then.  After a few days of this and tons of animal hair later the clothes end up down the laundry chute to get washed.  I feel like if we can keep our clothes off the floor we will cut down our laundry by a load or a half per week. 

This has been a pet-peeve of mine for a while with Ben, but I noticed that I sometimes leave clothes on the floor too.  I figure if we work together on this issue we can save each other the frustration and also some water from being wasted.  This will also reduce our need to use additional laundry soap so we will also save money on that.  I stopped using fabric softener and dryer sheets because of artificial fragrances.  This ties into this week’s task because we eventually want to cut out all products that use chemicals.  If you have any tips on keeping laundry clean longer, please leave a comment in a comment section below.

The challenge that Ashley assigned to me this week was to become aware of and act on water conservation around the house.  During this past week, I have learned many facts about water conservation and have taken steps that will save 100s of thousands of gallons over the course of my life.   Once again, this blog (along with Ashley) has helped me to learn something about environmentalism, why it is important to be green and steps we can all take to help.  If I can do them with little or no effort, I think most people can do the same.  Come join me in this going green journey!

Probably the biggest change I made this week was the discontinuation of a longtime habit.  I stopped taking two baths a day.  I have to admit, I cannot stop taking baths altogether, but am only showering or bathing once a day now.  I suppose I may occasionally shower twice if I ever find myself Jell-O wrestling or in a spaghetti eating contest, but that has not happened to date.   Basically, I am trying to religiously follow the previous post 5 Super Easy Ways to Conserve 54 Gallons of Water Today!  So far, each of these items have been very easy to follow and think they will be a regular part of my future.

Sure, it has been reported that Americans are using less water today than in 1975, but we can do better.  There are many simple things that we can all do to put a little less strain on the water treatment plants and overall water consumption lifecycle.  Little things like turning off the faucet when you are brushing your teeth can end up making a big difference.

So, as this week closes, I am feeling pretty good with how this whole venture is going.  Not only did I learn how to conserve water, I also learned how to save a few trees by stopping junk mail and also learned about some of the cool green news websites.  Let me know any advice in the comments area below and keep watching for this next week’s task.

This week, guygoesgreen has been focusing on water conservation around the house.  I may not be the greenest guy in the world, but I am learning and already making a positive impact on the world around me.  Today, I am going to highlight some interesting links that I found relating to water.

Tapit – I just recently found this site.   Tapit is a grassroots sort of operation where they are trying to build a network of café’s and locations where people can refill their water bottles.  The network is still relatively small, but I love the idea of helping people find locations to fill water.  This can help reduce the number of plastic bottles that end up in the landfill.

H2OUSE – This gives users a graphical interface where users can select different areas of the house to learn how they can save water.

100 Ways to conserve water – This is a detailed list of things you can do to save water.  There are 100.  J

Enjoy the links, and please let me know if you have any great water resources in the comments area below.

While researching this topic, I found that there are a ton of all encompassing lists about “how to conserve water” on the internet, so I thought I would narrow this down to a list that a regular guy or gal can easily follow and accomplish with little or no effort.  I present “5 Super Easy Ways to Conserve 54 Gallons of Water Today!”  There are certainly several ways to conserve water that can get rather extensive.  I have learned that some individuals even save their shower water to use in the garden.  This is certainly noble, but right now this is not a practical step for me.  For me, today, I want to learn how I can make the biggest difference possible.  Here is my list of 5 super easy ways to conserve 54 gallons of water today:

1.  Reduce your bath/shower intake.  The average bath is between 25 and 50 gallons.  Shower heads can emit anywhere between 1 gpm and 10 gpm (where the motto is ‘the best thing since Niagara Falls…. Kind of funny to me, but seriously), but on average about 2.7 gallons per minute.  If you shower or bath more than once a day, cutting this down can save 5-50 gallons of fresh water every day.  If you shower, you can cut a minute out or if you bath, don’t fill it up all the way.  On average, I am going to say that this can ultimately save 25 gallons a day.
2. Don’t flush.  No, I am not saying you should let a big ol’ Charleston Chew lay when you are at work, but when you are at home there is nothing wrong with the old phrase “Yellow ,let it mellow. Brown, flush it down.”  According to the Dual Flush Toilets blog, the average person uses 19 gallons of water a day on the toilet.  In other news, I am amazed that there is enough material to make an entire blog about Dual Flush Toilets.  Seriously though, being a little easy on the flush lever I can cut out 10 gallons a day.
3. Once you finish drinking a bottle of water or pop, refill it with water and put it in your toilet tank.  According to the Daily Green, this can save up to 10 Gallons a day.
4. Turn off the sink when you are brushing your teeth.  According the Greener People, turning off your faucet while you are brushing can save you 5 gallons a day.
5. If you are a guy, when you shave do not let the faucet run continuously.  Fill the sink basin.  A member of the NY assembly indicates that this can save up to 4 gallons a day.

By following the 5 simple steps, you can save 54 gallons of water… today.  This assumes that you are reading this post early in the morning and have not already flushed your pee down.    Here is the kicker; many of these tips will actually take you LESS effort than if it were business as normal.  To add this up, these 5 very simple and easy actions can conserve almost 20,000 gallons of water in a year.  We can all make a difference, it does not have to take much effort and it can start today.  Please let me know any other ideas you have in the comment area below.

As you may know from my previous posts, I have been somewhat of a pig when it comes to taking baths.  I typically have been taking 2 a day, but with this week’s challenge of conserving water, I have stopped.  I only shower or bath once a day and no longer twice.  I thought it would be interesting to see how much water will be saved by doing this.

I have found several different statistics for how much water a bath holds.  The range I have found is from 25 gallons to 50 gallons.  For the sake of this post, I am going to say that the average bath is 35 gallons of water and the rest of the bath displacement would be 15 gallons of glistening man bath filler (me).

I have been taking 2 baths a day and now I am only taking one. Given that 35 gallons is one bath:

35 gallons * 365 days  = 12,775 gallons of water that I will be conserving in the future.  Nearly 13,000 gallons of water!

What does 13,000 gallons equate to?

1. Enough to keep a single person alive for almost a lifetime (assuming 8 cups/day and 72 year lifespan)
2. About the amount of water to fill a 24’ round pool.
3. According to this very unscientific answer, it would be the number of gallons cried by approximately 722 men in the span of their life.   650 men if they are lifetime Minnesota Viking fans.

In summary, it is a huge amount of water.  These were the stats I could come up with in the time I had to work with, but please let me know in the comments area below if you have any extra information.

Ben has been talking about reducing the household use of water for a more personal use, but I’d like to go into it from a health standpoint.    Everyone needs water to survive.   We drink it every day as a beverage and also in the food we eat.  We need to because it supports our body.  Up to 70% of our bodies are made up of water, and this water is required for us to live.  Water does everything from removing toxins from the body, cures common ailments and suppress’ our appetite. 

Now how do we get water?  Most of us take it straight from the tap, which is the most economical way to get water.  However, too many of us buy bottled water and maybe not enough of us remember a particular bottled water company that fills from the tap anyway.  There are a couple of negative aspects of buying bottled water.  One, which is a green-blogger’s nightmare, is the horrific statistics that I pulled from online stating that in 2005 “approximately 30 billion plastic water bottles were purchased, with only about 12% recycled.”  That is a staggering number!  You can view a video representation of this statistic here.

Another negative from buying water in a bottle is these pestering claims that BPA contaminate the water we drink.  BPA which stands for Bisphenol A, is a compound that is used to produce plastic products.  Wikipedia states that, “Bisphenol A is used primarily to make plastics, and…have been in commerce for more than 50 years” and has some potentially harmful health effects.  Bisphenol A “is an endocrine disruptor, which can mimic the body’s own hormones and may lead to negative health effects.”  To put it simply, this may affect infants and fetuses while their brains are developing, may create an earlier state for puberty for females and may also increase the risk of breast cancer in women.  This is startling; BPA, “may be an underlying cause of the increased incidence of breast cancer observed over the last 50 years.”

Okay, this isn’t the end of the world.  We have options.  Ever since I started hearing about this plastic additive I started making a few changes in my life.  A couple of years we purchased a Brita Pitcher, and I must say was probably our best purchase.   It filters out 98% of lead and reduces the amount of Chlorine and several other elements in your water.  It just tastes so much fresher.  It also reduces the amount of plastic water bottles that are used each day. 

Another product that I purchased, and see advertised all over now are these aluminum water bottles.  These are just as convenient as plastic water bottles except you don’t have to worry about any waste you create by using it.  It is a reusable bottle that you simply fill up at home.   Plus there are so many designs now that you can better reflect your personality by use of your water bottle.

So maybe this blog won’t help reduce your consumption of water, hopefully not anyways, but at least you can make smarter decisions when it comes to drinking water.  Most, if not all of this information is not new to anyone, but I think statistics help make more apparent that there is a problem in our usage rates.  If you have any additional ideas or comments to help promote healthy water consumption, please post in the comments section below.

This week, Ashley’s task for me is to conserve water around the house.  For those of you just joining us, over the next year my wife is going to assign me a green task or challenge to complete every week.  It is my job to research the issue, make a change that is beneficial for the environment and in this case I need to learn about conserving water.  I began by trying to find ways to conserve water, but then I realized I was putting the cart before the horse.  First, I need to figure out why it is a good idea to conserve water.   This post will be covering the various reasons we should be conserving water.

I found the basic answers here.  It helps save the environment, it saves energy and it saves money.   This seems like a rather simple explanation, but I will delve a bit further.

It helps the environment.  Only 1% of the water on the planet is usable by humans and less than 1% of that is in the form of lakes and rivers.  This is the water that we use and also takes away from the environment.  Using water puts a strain the animals and plants that also rely on fresh water to survive.  The reality is that we get water from treatment plants, which indicates to me that fresh, clean water is not in abundant supply and that we use more water than is readily available.  Ultimately, reducing our water usage will help keep the waterways, fishies, birdies, planties and algies safe.

It conserves energy.  The water that comes out of our tap was cleaned at some point and will be processed once used.  The EPA indicates that 3% of the national US energy consumption is used for drinking water and waste water services.  This equates to 56 billion kilowatt hours, or about the amount of energy Switzerland uses in a year and adds about 45 million tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.  It seems that water consumption is directly correlated to energy waste.

Finally, there is the money saving factor.  This part particularly appeals to me because it is always nice to save a few bucks.  Less water use = less water heating = less energy used = lower water and electric bill. 

In summary, if we can save water, it helps the environment in a variety of ways.  Not only does it save fresh water for our environment, but it also helps to conserve energy and can also put money in our pockets.  If you have any interesting information about water waste or other reasons why we should be conserving water, please put them in the comments area below.

Week three is here and I have a new task.  I knew this one was coming and have dreaded it.  I know this is a personal indulgence and completely understand it to be wasteful.  Ashley’s challenge for me is to reduce personal water usage.  This includes water for baths, showers, the toilet and water used throughout the day.  Green Guy is going to have a tough week.

This is going to be a tough one for me because I love baths.  To me, a bath represents complete relaxation.  I take two baths a day.  Part of the issue (or at least this is my excuse) is that my sinuses are a bit wonky and soaking in hot water seems to open up my nasal passages for me to breath.  It feels very good to be able to breathe unobstructed every once in a while.  I do have a prescription for this, but am not too fond of shoving unnecessary medications in my body.

Ok, all excuses aside, I will reduce the number of baths I take, the length of time I spend in the shower and also stop running the water while brushing my teeth.  I do not think I can completely give up baths, but I will reduce this to one a day per Ashley’s request.  There may be other items, but I am not knowledgeable enough on the topic yet, so I best get started.

Let me know in the comments area below if you have any suggestions for me on this topic.