More Water Conservation
A few months ago, my mom asked me if there was anything she could do to reduce the amount of water that was being used from washing hands in the bathroom. She was looking for something she could either attach to the faucet or replace the faucet all together. Living in the desert of Arizona, water gets very expensive. When she asked me, I didn’t find anything right away online. However, while recently doing some research into products that I want to put into my next home and stumbled into something called WaterSense.
WaterSense is a label put out by the EPA to promote water-efficient products. By installing a WaterSense labeled bathroom faucet or accessory, you could reduce the amount of water by 30%. Now pay attention, because I said faucet or accessory. What I mean there is, my mom can go to the store and buy an aerator (with the WaterSense logo), then simply unscrew the old aerator from the faucet and screw the new one on. No tools required. This also means, that when I go to do all the upgrades on my new house (and there will be a lot of upgrades), I can buy a faucet with the WaterSense label on it. If they tend to be more expensive, I’ll just buy whatever faucet I want and then spend a couple bucks on the aerator.
I don’t know why this WaterSense concept isn’t being promoted more. This even goes beyond just faucets, but also toilets, showerheads, landscape irrigation and even just every day practices for water conservation. For me, the faucet one is by far the easiest to do. It takes less than $5 and less than 5 minutes. Even if you don’t consider yourself handy at all, give this one a try. I think of the task being similar to replacing a light bulb and I know you can do that. I actually had a hard time finding instructions on the web because it is so easy, but these are decent. If you aren’t sure if your product is already a WaterSense labeled product, you can look up products that qualify on the EPA website.
Tags: environment, green, Water
October 24th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Just an update, I talked to my mom the other day. She had a difficult time finding these at Lowe’s, so had to go to Ace Hardware. It took a bit, but she did find them. Now that the aerators are installed, she said she does notice the difference. What she notices is mostly the sound, but says there is still plenty of water coming out to wash hands thoroughly. Her comment was that every time she turns on the faucet and hears the sound, she thinks how much water she is saving. Once she gets a good baseline, she is going to compare her water bills for me to see if she sees a difference.