1) Give up bottled water. How many reasons do you need? Toxic plastic is used to contain bottled water. Bottled water generates mountains of trash. Making bottled water and moving it around the globe wastes enormous amounts of energy. Bottled water may not be as safe to drink as tap water.  Here’s the real kicker: bottling water wastes water. Two gallons of water are wasted for every gallon bottled. Stupid, no?

2) Give up the idea that you have to drink water all the time. Where did that notion come from, that somehow, your outfit isn’t complete without a bottle of water by your side? I’ve gotten along just fine drinking from drinking fountains and — believe it or not — going for a couple of hours at a time without drinking water. Try it. You won’t die.

3) Filter your water at home. If you’re concerned about water quality, put a filter on your tap and keep water in your refrigerator or in a closed carafe on your kitchen counter or desk top. You can also buy reusable water bottles that come with their own filter. Cheap, good, and trash-free.

4) Take shorter showers. Get in. Soap up. Get out. I bet you can do it in five minutes; ten, max.

5) Use low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators. They’ll increase the pressure coming out of the tap so you won’t notice you’re actually using a lot less water. Get ’em at your local hardware store. Simple, yes?

6) Get a new toilet.

I recently replaced mine with one that’s Water Sense certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (you can see the water sense logo on my toilet tank if you look closely!); if I’d had time to wait a week for a special delivery, I could have gotten a dual-flush toilet that’s even more water-efficient. I loved this water-saving toilet I saw in Australia.

7) Replace your lawn. Grass is weird; in fact, it’s not even natural – really, where in Nature does a monoculture (i.e., just one plant) grow completely weed-free? Nowhere. Give it up in favor of other groundcovers that use a lot less water and require far less maintenance.

8) Stop the leaks. Inside or outside, faucets drip if they’re not tightened properly.  If tightening a faucet doesn’t stop the drip, you’ll probably have to remove the knob and replace an old washer. If I can do it, you can.

9) Wash full loads. This goes for the dishwasher as well as the clothes washer. If you’re going to use all that water, make it wash as much as the machine can hold. And by the way, washing dishes by hand uses a lot more water than doing them in the dishwasher. You don’t need to rinse in advance – just wipe off the grime with a damp sponge or cloth.

10) Turn the water off. Duhhh…Why people still let faucets run when they’re brushing their teeth is beyond me. You don’t need to let the shower run for ten minutes before you get in, either. And you don’t need to let the kitchen tap run while you’re just clearing the table or off talking on the phone. If you like the sound of running water, get a small fountain that will circulate the same water over and over. Otherwise, just let it be.

Bonus: Buy less, and buy used. Manufacturing uses an enormous amount of water. H2O is used to grow crops, process materials, mine minerals, and clean finished products. Every time you buy something, you’re buying the water used to make that thing. Every time you throw something away, you’re throwing our the water used to make it, as well. Buy less, and buy used. You’ll save money, and save water, too.

The post 10 No-Brainer Ways to Use Water Wisely. Plus, a Bonus… appeared first on Big Green Purse.

One person of every three on the planet today isn’t nearly so fortunate, according to the International Water Management Institute, because they lack reliable access to fresh water. Even here in the U.S., the federal Government Accountability Office reported in 2003 that “water managers in thirty-six states anticipate water shortages locally, regionally, or statewide within the next ten years.”

The rest of the world looks equally thirsty. By 2025, worries the Water Management Institute, all of Africa and the Middle East, and almost all of South and Central America and Asia, will either be running out of water or unable to afford its cost.

Dirty Water Kills Kids

They’ll also be contending with its safety. “Every day more children die from dirty water than HIV-AIDS, malaria, war, and accidents all put together,” says Maude Barlow, co-author of Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. According to a 2003 survey by the European Environment Agency, nitrates, toxins, heavy metals and/or harmful microorganisms contaminate ground water in nearly every European country and former Soviet republic.

And What About Cleopatra?

There is no “new water.” We are essentially using the same water Cleopatra used 2,000 years ago. But we’re using a lot more of it:

If today is an average day, you’ll probably use about 90 gallons of water just for today – which amounts to about 107,000 gallons for the year: enough to fill your bathtub almost 3,000 times.

We use water to grow lawns, wash dishes, rinse food, shower and shave, and let the tap run when we brush our teeth. About 14 percent leaks down the drain.

Older toilets waste more clean water in a single flush than many Africans use in an entire day.

Only 1 percent of all the world’s water can be used for drinking.

Nearly 97 percent of the world’s water is salty and otherwise undrinkable. The other 2 percent is locked up in the ice caps and glaciers.

What if You’re Pregnant?

In the U.S., we count on our tap water to be safe, and for the most part it is. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets standards for approximately ninety contaminants in drinking water. Outbreaks from microbial contamination — the kind that give you a stomach ache or diarrhea — are rare, given how many people are serviced by the public drinking water system. The bigger issue revolves around chemicals that wastewater treatment facilities weren’t designed to remove. The common fertilizer ingredient nitrate, for example, can seep into drinking water through runoff from lawns, gardens, and agricultural fields, causing “blue baby syndrome” if it depletes a newborn baby’s hemoglobin. Pregnant and nursing women and the elderly should also avoid water that’s high in nitrate content.

Bottled Water is Not the Solution

Bottled water won’t be the solution. Since so much “bottled” water is actually tap water, there’s no guarantee there’ll be enough to go around. And as we’ve discussed here before, bottling water in plastic, throwaway bottles creates a whole host of environmental problems that are better left alone.

All Those Drugs, All Those Weird Fish

Pharmaceuticals — including painkillers, depression medication, and birth control drugs — and endocrine-disrupting chemicals from deodorants, shampoos, body soaps, and lotions are also roiling America’s freshwater supplies. The cumulative effect of trace amounts of these chemicals has the EPA concerned, given their links to behavioral and sexual mutations in fish, amphibians, and birds. Part of the problem is that consumers flush old and unwanted drugs down toilets or drains. Another factor is the sheer volume of pharmaceuticals and personal-care products entering our waterways. In a U.S. Geological Survey/EPA study of 139 streams in 30 states, pharmaceuticals were found in 80 percent of the samples taken.

These aren’t benign elements. According to a 2006 analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey, “previously banned compounds…such as DDT and chlordane, natural and anthropogenic hormones, herbicides, fungicides, industrial chemicals” and other compounds that might act as endocrine disrupters lead to aberrations like both male and female sex organs turning up on the same fish.

Nasty Chemicals in the Water, Learning Disabilities in Kids?

The National Academy of Sciences is worried, too. Its list of “naturally occurring and man-made contaminants in drinking water of concern to all of us” includes arsenic, perchlorate (a component of rocket fuel and fireworks), copper, and methylmercury, the scourge of parents anxious about learning disabilities and developmental disorders in their kids.

What About the Oceans?

The ocean’s misfortune is also our own. Twenty percent of coral reefs and 35 percent of mangroves have been lost since 1980, along with their capacity to buffer coastal communities from storms. With nearly half the world’s cities located within 50 kilometers of a coast, people are more vulnerable than ever before to extreme weather events, like Hurricane Katrina, whose impact on New Orleans is pictured at left. Over half of the synthetic nitrogen ever used to fertilize American farmland has been applied in the last two decades. As much as 50 percent of it has run off, creating dead zones in great aquatic cauldrons like the Gulf of Mexico that make short shrift of those shrimp you like to serve for dinner. Does anyone need a reminder about the impact the oil industry has on global H2O? We’ll be learning about the devastating impact of the recent Gulf Oil Disaster for months and years to come.

Is it Hopeless?

It all depends on what we do next. We know the world’s waters are in peril. We also know there’s no way we can make more water. But we also know what to do to keep it safe. Here’s the big picture:

1) Eliminate the use of all toxic chemicals.

2) Immediately implement the water conservation strategies we’ve already invented.

3) Transition as quickly as possible away from fossil fuels in favor of renewable resources that don’t contribute to climate change or pollute our rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans.

We know what to do.

Will we? The answer is up to us all.

The post We’re Drinking the Same Water as Cleopatra. Is It as Clean? appeared first on Big Green Purse.

* I signed up to attend a climate change rally in Washington, D.C. on October 24, Climate Action Day. Want to do the same? Visit 350.org for details.

* I wrote a letter to Wal-Mart encouraging the company to involve consumers in the new initiative it’s launched to establish sustainability standards for manufacturers and vendors it does business with. It matters, because as Wal-Mart goes, so goes the world. Learn more here – and get the link so you can write a letter yourself.

*  I donated to Alaska Wilderness League, a highly effective non-profit organization working to prevent oil drilling in America’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They need your money. Can you donate, too?

* I’m tweeting all day about the need to act now to reduce climate change. If I’m not following you, let me know at www.twitter.com/dianemaceachern and www.twitter.com/biggreenpurse.

What are you doing to take action and make a difference? Let us know!

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