I was standing in the shower this morning day dreaming away when it hit me that I am was probably wasting loads of water and that my shower routine was something I should consider changing.
So I did a little research and found out that showering is the greatest consumer of water in the average Australian home (using on average 29% of all household water consumption). Go to www.savewater.com.au for more info
I live in a rental so I am not at liberty to go changing over the shower heads. I need to check this out with my other three flatmates first. But for the record retro shower heads use about 20 litres of water per minute and AAA rated use 11 litres of water per minute.
So first thing I can do is get a bucket and start capturing the cold water that I waste while my hand is just hanging out there in the water waiting for it to heat up. I have a plastic bucket at home that someone in my house does their washing in. Plus I just ordered one of these awesome pop up buckets from www.rippleproducts.com.au that will easily store in the bathroom when I am not using it. I can use this water for anything as it is still clean. I can fill up my drink bottle, leave it in the bucket for handwashing, wash the breakfast dishes with it, boil a cuppa or water the veggies. This saves me about 5 litres of water each time I shower.
I can then use another bucket to capture the water while I am in the shower. This will be grey water and I can’t use it on my veggies. I can use it on trees and the lawn or to wash my flatmates motorbike or car. You need to use this water within 24 hours because of the bacteria may reach harmful levels after that.
Given that my bucket is 9 litres I will be able to reuse and save 9 litres of water every day.
Total water saving each year is 5110 litres.
So then I thought about how long my shower is and how much water I am actually using. I think I am hanging out in the shower for about 10 minutes each day. Sometimes longer as I seem to have used it as a creative refuge when I can’t solve a problem at work or in my business. It has become the think tank. In winter I jump in the shower when I am cold and use it to warm up. Damn I am using at least 200 litres of water every day. That is 73,000 litres per year. Crap.
So the lovely people at ripple also have shower timers. I just ordered the simple old school sand timer that you turn upside down. 4 minutes seems to be the recommended shower time. I am going with it. Water usage down to 80 litres per day and 29,200 (or less because if I am honest some days in summer I don’t shower I just head straight to the beach…is that bad?)
Adding the water from my buckets to the shorter shower time I will be saving 48,910 litres of water each year.
Plus I will be saving on my water bills. Water costs $1.61 per thousand litres. So I will save about $79 each year. If my flaties get into this as well (the timer will be in there for everyone) the 4 of us could save a $316 together.
I am not so sure about the energy I will be saving by not having to heat the water I no longer use. I will do some research and get back to you on that one.
Effort required to make this change: virtually none, I ordered the bucket and timer online and they get delivered to my house. Total cost $30. Could do it for nothing if you have a bucket at home and a water proof watch.
