This one is so easy, I am embarassed that it had to be suggested to me by Ideal Byte - http://www.idealbite.com/ - catch water in a bucket. When they posted the suggestion they even prefaced it by saying, they didn't think THEY were even going to do it, but I thought - WHY NOT? I got a bucket for each bathroom, and when we are warming up the water for a shower, we catch the initial flow of cool water and use it later to flush the toilet - saving an entire tank of toilet flushing water. How easy is that?
Two of the commodes in my house are pre-1996, thus rather large, so I am happy to re-use that water and save 5 or 6 gallons. The bucket holds 10 quarts, and that is the equivalent of some of the newer tanks that only hold 2 or 3 gallons of water for flushing. It only takes a couple of gallons to flush normally, so the bit left over can be used to add back into the bowl, which might be left without much in the reservoir after a bucket flush. When I first read about the idea they suggested using the water you catch in the shower for watering plants, but it is much closer to just go over to the john & dump it in.
Bill Nye (the science guy) finished up his segment on Stuff Happens (in the bathroom) by saying the best thing in the bathroom you can do for the environment is use less water. Another thing he suggested was to use paper made from recycled paper that has been oxygen bleached rather than chlorine or dioxin bleached. He said that if every household in America used just one roll of the "Green TP" in stead of a roll of the other stuff it would save 40,000 trees! I bought a package of 12 rolls. Does that mean I saved 480,000 Trees? I know, I know - EVERYONE has to do it, but I also kept a little bit of harmful chemicals out of the enviroment and circumvented all the initial energy expended to process the trees from scratch.
I have gotten my Mom & husband on this band wagon . . . yes they both think I'm nuts. Hey - it really is easy being green.
No comments:
Post a Comment