That's our most recent water bill. Yep, that's right, its a CREDIT.
If you look at the amount of water we have used in the last two bills (one estimate, one actual), we are at 39 cubic metres in 124 days. For some of those days there were 3 of us in the house and for some of those days there were 4 of us in the house, but I think a safe estimate is that we are now at 85 litres of water per person per day. This is v. exciting as we are now at 25% of the average! Pretty good considering a year or so ago we were at 78% of the average.
What I've done recently as well as the navy shower thing and the 'letting it mellow' thing include:
- installed a 6L flush toilet in the downstairs apartment
- installed low flow showerheads (1.25 gallons/minute) in both apartments
- installed low flow aerators (2.0 gallons/min) on the kitchen and bathroom taps in both apartments
- started capturing my shower water and using it to flush the toilet (more on that in another post
- got super new uber green tenants in our rental apartment :)
3 comments:
That is awesome Rachel! I've been reading the book "Eau Canada" in preparation for my course and I'm a little appalled at our wastefulness as a culture/country. An important premise of the book is that Canada does not really have the surplus of water that we all perceive - it's very interesting!
As always, keep up the good work!
Hi! I found you via the link from Unstuffed's blog. Congrats on your amazing water bill! I've been using the shower warm up water to flush as well, and I can't believe I've been letting that water just go down the drain all those years! I'm looking forward to poking around your blog and seeing what other good stuff you're up to :)
Hey Titia,
Thanks! That book sounds good. I'll have to look for it at the library. My perception of water was permanently changed by my 6 month stay in India. I was so wasteful with water before that. Luckily we don't have our water bills from that far back. I'm sure I'd be horrified. In India I realized how little water I actually need. There is a quote that has stuck with me since that time:
"No one values water more than a village woman who has to walk for miles to fetch it... No one values it less than urban folk who pay for it to flow endlessly at the turn of a tap" - Arundhati Roy
Looking forward to hearing about your course. :)
Theresa,
Thanks for stopping by! :) I know what you mean about the grey water. I too can't believe I've been letting it go to waste. And its so easy to capture and use!
Looking forward to browsing through your blog too. :-)
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