Water Conservation

Since my last post, I have been doing some research about water conservation. Here are some tips on conserving water at home. The best site for this information compiled: Sahra

-Get your house checked for leaky pipes
-For your toilet, twice a year add a few drops of food coloring to the tank. If the colored water enters the bowl on its own, then you know you need to have it repaired. (Thanks to this link.)
-Run the dishwasher only when it is full.
-Take shorter showers (sorry)
-Water your lawn in the morning, since moisture is mostly evaporated by the sun.
-Install low-flow faucets



Also, I like the line by designer Linda Loudermilk called Water is a Human Right. Her necklace (pictured above) is gorgeous and would be a fantastic conversation piece. Afterall, conversations make all the difference as we try to move toward sustainability.

Grey/Graywater in Homes

Water recycling can start at home. Reusing the excess water that contains trace amounts of dirt, soap, etc. makes sense from any vantage. Saving the water from traveling outside your home will make a huge impact for you and the environment. An icon of water management was featured in a Dwell Magazine Article in November 2007: The Clovelly House. The home's "sustainable showpiece—a pocket-sized water-treatment plant" can store " nearly 800 gallons of rainwater collected on the roof." The water collected from the roof is reused for everything shy of consumption (drinking and cooking). The impetus for these clients was dialog: "The whole point was to contribute to the discussion of green energy—to show it is possible to do these sorts of things" Mary Henning, one if the inhabitants told Dwell for the article.

Greywater (or graywater*, depending on your spelling background) Here are two publications (PDFs):

Washington Greywater

Arizona graywater brochure 10-07

*Parenthetically, I would argue that not only is the presence of 2 spellings poetic ('a grey/gray area'), but a neat way to think of it is that gray is a color, grey is a colour!