Saving the Water that Sustains Us

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My experience saving water has been an interesting and eye opening one. Shorter showers are the greatest sacrifice as I find them therapeutic and cutting them in half (or to a third) is a hard adjustment, but a worthwhile one as I have calculated. Washing dishes with a dishpan seemed like a gross hassle at first, but again once tried it was worth the water it saved. I thought reusing dishwater for multiple scrubbings would be unsanitary but a final soaping and rinsing solved that problem. Watering in the early morning or later evening was the easiest water saving adjustment to make, it simply required remembering to do it.

Shower: 27 second gallon; Therefore a 15 minute shower consumes roughly 33 gallons of water, and a 5 minute shower uses 11.

Kitchen Sink: 34 second gallon; Therefore leaving the faucet running for 20 minutes a day consumes roughly 38 gallons of water, using a dishpan cuts water consumption in half for a savings of about 19 gallons a day.

Garden Sprinkler: 31 second gallon; Therefore leaving the sprinkler on for 1 hour consumes 116 gallons of water. Over the course of the hour one pint of 18 fl oz of water accumulated in the bucket during the mid day watering and 19 fl oz accumulated during the evening watering. According to this calculation roughly 5 percent of water used for irrigation is lost to evaporation on a hot day!

By cutting shower length to one third the pre PSP length 22 gallons of water were saved daily, a surprisingly large number. Although the sacrifice of shorter showers is a relatively hard adjustment to make it is worth it (and the fish are thankful). By using the dishpan to reuse scrubbing water the faucet is only on for roughly half of the pre PSP length. I thought that the dishpan would save more water but each dish must be rinsed following the dishpan usage so the savings were less than anticipated. The irrigation time adjustment saved the least water relative to the total amount consumed during the irrigation cycle, 66% savings for shower, 50% savings for dishes, and 5% savings for irrigation while shower consumed a total of 11 gallons, dishes consumed 19 gallons, and irrigation used 116 gallons (although irrigation does not happen daily and the others do).

Sustainability is a social obligation. It is unfair, unjustifiable, and inexcusable to live such luxurious lifestyles as we Americans do and not consider the effect that this lifestyle has on the environment; the environment that gives us life, more so than cars, iphones, or even medicine. Beyond considering our effect on the environment, we must do something to ease the harmful affects each of us place on our surroundings. Clean drinking water along with many other aspects of our natural environment are essential to life, and taking action to preserve this water is crucial to human rights, quality of life, and future generations. If everyone could cut their water consumption in half fresh water would be available to millions more people. Furthermore, consuming the earth’s resources today is unfair to those generations to come.