Guy Goes Green

Wannabe green guy going green

Posts Tagged ‘water’

5 Super Easy Ways to Conserve 54 Gallons of Water Today!

November 5th, 2009

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

3 comments »

Posted in water, Week 3 Saving Water

Tags: bottled water conserve green toilet water

Water saved by not taking a bath – a lot – 13,000 gallons

November 4th, 2009

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?

Enough to keep a single person alive for almost a lifetime (assuming 8 cups/day and 72 year lifespan)
About the amount of water to fill a 24’ round pool.
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.

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Posted in water, Week 3 Saving Water

Tags: bath green reuse water

Dangers of bottled water and BPA – Bisphenal A

November 4th, 2009

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.