The average resident in California uses 91 gallons of water per day.
These quick and simple steps will immediately reduce your indoor water use:
- Shorten your showers – A standard showerhead uses 2.5 gallons of water per minute. Shortening ashower by just 2 minutes saves 5 gallons. Over one year’s time, that amounts to 1,825 gallons per person.
- Turn off the shower – Another 1,800 gallons per year per person could be saved simply by turning off the shower while washing your hair.
- Install a shower flow restrictor – Available for less than $10, this little gadget can reduce the water used in a shower by 30-50% or more.
- Fill the sink to wash dirty dishes – Washing dishes with a faucet uses 20 gallons of water. Filling and plugging the sink will save 10 gallons every time you do dishes.
- Fill the clothes washer before doing a load of laundry – This will reduce the number of loads that you do every month, saving 25-30+% of water used.
These simple steps can save thousands of gallons of water per household.
This summer, the California Energy Commission will be rolling out several rebate programs that provide incentives for purchasing and installing water efficient appliances and fixtures. The most cost-effective retrofit that you could do would be to replace older toilets with new water-efficient ones that use as little as 1.2 gallons per flush (older toilets use 3 gallons or more!). According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense program: “Over the course of your lifetime, you will likely flush the toilet nearly 140,000 times. If you replace older, existing toilets with WaterSense labeled models, you can save 4,000 gallons per year with this simpler, greener choice.“