Water Footprint

Inspired by a blog I read entitled Crunchy Chicken. Her most recent post discusses your water footprint. Intrigued I decided to see how we compare. First off I dug out our most recent water bill. For the month of 5/12 through 6/11 exactly 30 days we used 586 cubic feet of water. This includes watering our garden, lawn, and inside water usage. In Crunchy Chickens blog she states that the average american uses about 100 gallons of water per day. My first thought was YEAH! we only used 586 in a month! But that would be wrong, cubic feet is not the same as gallons. So I googled cubic feet to gallons, and google provided me with this: 1 cubic foot = 7.48051 gallons. Ok so I took my 586 cubic feet of water used in a month and divided it by the 30 days to get my daily average of cubic feet of water used. 586 / 30 = 19.533 but now according to google I have to multiply those lovely 19.533 cubic feet of water by 7.48051 to get gallons. So 19.533 x 7.48051 = 146 gallons per day. But that number should be divided by the 2 people who live here. So 146 gallons / 2 people = 73 gallons per person! WOO HOO below the average american of 100 gallons per day! That is exciting.

Now Jacob and I did this comparison about a week ago and were shocked to see what we have done. So Now let's figure out how wasteful we were last year at this exact time.

Ready for this....

2845 cubic feet of water used same number of days, same month in 2007! OMG!!! That is some green lawn we had! I wonder if thats why our lawn is brown?

Lets figure the gallons!!!

2845 / 30 = 94.8 cubic feet per day x 7.48051 to get gallons = 709 gallons per day / 2 people = 354.5 gallons per day per person!

That is a savings of 281.5 gallons per day per person from last year!




What have we done?

1. Water lawn 1" of water per week, that is usually about 40 minutes to an hour. ONLY once per week. Yes your lawn will turn brown, but it is going dormant it's not dead it will green up when it starts raining and cooling down. (Water your plants normally)

2. Flush your toilets less (yes it's kinda eww gross) but the as the rhyme goes "if it's yellow let it mellow if it's brown flush it down!"

3. Is that shirt really dirty? Wear again, it reduces the laundry by half! I'm not talking undies and sweaty socks but shirts, jeans, shorts and skirts do they really have to be one wear only?

4. Back to the toilets: Add 16 oz. or bigger glass if you have it, with rocks, water or a mixture of them, here is a picture of our toilet with 2 glass jars filled with small rocks and water. Thus reducing the volume of water with each flush of the toilet.

5. Build a rain barrel, ours are already constructed and in place. But we will be doing some at my parents house and we'll post the how-to when we do that.

6. Remember to turn off the water when: you brush your teeth, wash the dishes (don't have the rinse water on constantly), shaving in the shower or out. Be conscience of the water around you, it like gasoline is in limited supply.

For more information visit Water Footprint.