Category Archives: Water Conservation

5 Easy Water Saving Tips You Can Adopt Today

Guest contributor Mike Sorensen is here today to share 5 tips for conserving water.

Water is in the news all the time it seems, and the use of water and rights to it are predicted to be a huge source of conflict in the world in the near future. In the United States, the average amount of water used by each person every day is 100 gallons, and that number is rising.

Water is a precious natural resource that is not infinitely available – there are limits to how much we can use and not be taking away from others in the world.

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Both/And

Can I just say that I think it is both harder and easier to be green in the summer?!

I can hang my clothes outside on the line to dry, but I am taking more showers due to being outside and sticky/dirty. Also? My hair is not nearly as fabulous post-baby and needs more washes. Boo.

I can keep more lights off inside since the sun shines brighter for longer, but I have all the fans going to try to circulate as much cool air as possible.

I can keep the doors and windows closed on the hottest days to keep the hot out and the cool in, but I’ll be darned if I’m turning off the AC!

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Washing the Dishes

We all have that chore that we hate around the house, don’t we? The one that we leave until the last possible moment? The one that we would gladly never do again in this lifetime? I have such a chore, anyways. The household task that I loathe above all others is washing dishes.

When I was young and single and still in university I did not have a dishwasher. I often resorted to tactics such as washing a single bowl because I wanted some cereal and all of the other bowls were dirty. It was not pretty. So when I got married and moved in with my husband, one of the requirements that we had for our first apartment was that it must have a dishwasher.

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Dish Washing Debate

Chores are no fun. Not for me, anyway. All the same, there are some chores that I don’t mind that much, and some that I really hate. The household task that I loathe above all others is washing dishes.

More dishesWhen I was young and single and still in university I did not have a dishwasher. I often resorted to tactics such as washing a single bowl because I wanted some cereal and all my bowls were dirty. It wasn’t pretty. So when I got married one of the requirements that I had for my first apartment with my new husband was that it must have a dishwasher.

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Suburbs Have a Leg-Up on Greening

Last week Mireya Navarro reported for the New York Times on the greening of suburban municipalities. In Green and Greener in Suburban Towns Navarro highlighted the Long Island town of Babylon.

“FOR two years, Valerie Williams had been considering making the five-bedroom home she grew up in more energy efficient — hoping to shrink her $350 monthly utility bill — but more pressing expenses always came first.

Then the town of Babylon came up with an offer she couldn’t refuse: if she and her husband, Carlos, paid $250 for an energy audit, the town would finance the recommended upgrades. The couple would repay the town at a monthly rate below the savings on their utility bill.”

Babylon is not alone.

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Minimizing Your Plastic Footprint: Glass Dharma Giveaway

Keeping the Earth Week fun moving right along, today as promised we have more great green products for you to win, more Earth Day tips, and bonus links to keep you clicking green all week long.

David Leonhardt, a glassblower and the founder of Glass Dharma, the original hand-made glass drinking straw, created his own line of drinking straws to “contribute one solution to the misuse of plastics in our society.”

By now I think most of us understand the over-use of the very non eco-friendly plastic material is a huge environmental problem, one with no clear solution in sight.

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A Step Beyond Cloth Diapers

Over the past few weeks I have been doing a little rundown on what modern cloth diapering really looks like, and a few comments have been made with curiosity about how early my son potty trained. If you don’t recall from earlier posts, by 16 months he learned to pretty much exclusively go poo on the potty and by just over two-years-old he was fully potty trained (aside from nights).

Now, I must admit, these early results were prompted not only by our cloth diapering (which I do believe helped tremendously) but also by our elimination communication efforts.

So, what exactly is elimination communication (EC), you ask?

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“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”

Post title from The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Water is really, really important stuff. It’s that clear liquid that quenches your thirst, cleans your body (and clothes and kitchens and loved ones too!) and accounts for about 55-70% of your body weight. Clean water is essential to life, and if you don’t agree, just ask anyone who doesn’t have access to it.

So, if you’re anything like I was, you realize that there’s a problem, but you’re not really sure what you can do. You use water all the time, and everything that you use seems to be cleaned or manufactured with water–but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to know where to start to make a difference.

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