Activity Overview: Saving water at home is easier than you think. By making small, intentional changes, you can save water at home.

Time: Varies based on the selected activity.

Did you know it takes energy to run water? Water is a precious resource and wasting it not only wastes water but energy too. Reducing water waste saves water, energy, and money. Did you know, heating water alone counts for an average of 15% of total household energy use? 

Conservation is the careful utilization of a natural resource in order to prevent depletion. When we conserve water, are careful about how we use it, we decrease water and energy waste.

Try one or more of these easy steps to reduce your water waste!

• Skip the bath, take a shower.
  • A bath takes at least 15 gallons of hot water; most baths use between 35 and 50 gallons. Taking a shower instead can reduce the amount of water and energy you use. The average shower runs at 2.1 gallons per minute (gpm) and lasts only eight minutes, using a total of 17.2 gallons.
• Take shorter showers.
  • Long showers can use just as much energy and water as a bath. If you reduce your shower from eight to five minutes, you can save an average of 6.3 gallons a day. That’s almost 2,300 gallons a year!
• Turn the water off while you brush your teeth.
  • The average bathroom faucet uses 0.5-1.5 gpm. If you brush your teeth for two minutes, that wastes between 1-3 gallons of water every time you brush your teeth. It may not seem like a lot, but brushing your teeth even once a day wastes between 365 to 1,095 gallons a year per person. Turning the water off while you brush your teeth saves a lot of water!
• Be intentional about your laundry.
  • Laundry is the second largest drain of water in your home. Being intentional about washing your clothes right: using cool water and making sure you don’t wash small loads. If you are intentional about washing clothes in the right loads, it can reduce the amount of water you use for laundry.
• Don’t let the water run.
  • Do you do the dishes by hand at home? The average kitchen sink uses 2.2 gpm. Filling the sink up with hot, soapy water and rinsing the dishes all at once will help reduce the amount of water you use.
• Reduce your outdoor water consumption
  • Learn what plants and flowers grow best in your climate. Planting something that needs a lot of water when you live somewhere with only a little rain means using more water.

Activities

• Measure your water family water use
  • Have your family count the number of loads of laundry they do, times they flush the toilet, use the dishwasher, how long they take showers and how many baths in one week. Set a goal for the following week to reduce each of those measurements.
• Don’t discard water.
  • Have unused water that you haven’t drunk? Instead of dumping it out, use it to water indoor plants.

Resources

Austin Water Water Use Calculator