As you all probably have heard by now, several major cities are facing serious droughts. The impact for the people and animals living in these areas is devastating. We are the ones responsible for this problem to begin with; think changed weather-patterns due to climate change and water waste, so the solution also lays with us.
Quite empowering, don’t you think?
My first encounter with drought was in Cape Town, and to be honest it took me by surprise. First off, I love taking baths and secondly, I love having a lush and green garden. I understood quite quickly that some changes needed to be made in my household AND daily routines to stay within the limit of 50 liters of water per person a day. To get a picture, the average american uses 350 L of waters a day… Starting to get the picture here?
Here are the steps I took to reduce my water-use and make my home water-smart!
Water w i s e
- You will find this on all the lists of everything but its such an important change you can make: eating a plant based diet.
- Bye bye baths. I cried and died a little on the inside, but so be it.
- I started to make sure that all dishwasher or laundry loads were full. I sort of did this before already, but this time there was no cheating allowed.
- I stopped having the shower and tap running while shampooing, brushing my teeth or doing the dishes.
- If it’s yellow, let it mellow… A.K.A you only flush every 4th time if it’s peepee. This one grossed me out in the beginning, but there’s some natural products you can put in your toilet to make it less.. well.. gross.
- I made sure that I only used organic, all natural cleaning products, laundry detergents and dish soap so that I could do the next on the list:
- I placed buckets in my sink and shower to start collect gray-water, that is the water already used once. This can be used in the garden, to clean or to manually flush toilets.
- I installed a home-made system making sure that I recycle the water being used from the washers.
- I planted waterwise plants in my garden.
There you have it honey bees! I hope you feel compelled to change your thinking and ways with water after reading this. Why waste the most precious resource on earth?