Water Conservation Tips

1. Turn off the tap while brushing your teeth and washing dishes by hand.
Many people do this already, but just in case you don’t, turn off the tap while you brush your teeth. By turning off the tap while you brush twice a day, you can save over 200 gallons of water per month!

Running a fully loaded dishwasher is more efficient than handwashing, but if you don’t have one, or prefer to hand-wash occasionally, turn off the faucet while you scrub. 

2. Take shorter showers, and shower less often.
While even the most water-conscious of us all love the occasional long, steamy shower, every minute you spend showering uses around 4.5 gallons of water.

Additionally, you can purchase shower heads that are also optimized for the lowest water usage without compromising on water pressure.

“Wait, you want me to shower less?!” Plenty of studies have shown that your hair is generally healthier if you wash it every other or every third day. This isn’t a golden rule for everyone, since some of us have different hair types that may require more or less washing. But washing your hair daily can strip it of its natural oils, tricking your hair into thinking it needs to produce more oil to replace it, which in turn makes you feel like you need to wash your hair again. Let’s not forget that Dry Shampoo was invented for this very reason! (Batiste Dry Shampoo is one of our favorites). Of course, if you’ve worked up a sweat, by all means take a shower!

3. When possible, replace older appliances and plumbing with newer, water-efficient ones.
When making purchasing decisions, opt for lower water usage for dishwashers, and washing machines.

When replacing toilets, opt for those that use minimal water both in the bowl and during flushing. One old-school trick is to CAREFULLY place a brick in your toilet tank to help reduce the amount of water used with each flush! Read here for details.

4. Adjust your eating habits.
A tough and controversial conversation to have these days is the topic of eating less meat and consuming less dairy. But regardless of how anyone may feel about giving up their daily meat intake, the figures speak for themselves. In the US alone, animal agriculture uses anywhere from 36-74 trillion gallons of water per year. TRILLION. While some have taken it upon themselves for both climate reasons and animal rights reasons (among others) to go completely vegetarian or vegan, even participating in one meatless dinner per week for the family can save up to 133 gallons of water!

Also, try to avoid water heavy crops. As much as we all love snacking on guac or mixed nuts, crops like avocados, walnuts, almonds, and rice are extremely water-heavy and are frequently grown in areas without plentiful, natural water supplies.

6. Make sure your yard is made up of climate-appropriate plants.
This isn’t as much of a problem in a state like Washington, but even here in the Puget Sound, if you do like to have green grass, please consider watering it much less often in the summertime. While having a brown-ish lawn isn’t traditionally appealing, watering lawns takes a huge amount of water for the benefit of ‘curb appeal.’

If you must water, doing so in the early morning or later evening for less evaporation. If you reside in a drier climate, please pick locally appropriate plants. If you live in the Southwest for example, consider a more desert-friendly yard and garden with desert flowers and cactuses.