Jeremy Mendoza
ILS 252
TA: Peter Allen
December 14, 2011
Introduction
Water is around us no matter where we look. Not only that, it is one of the most important resources to humanity. With these two facts combined, it is easy for us to take the water we have for granted. With the world population rapidly nearing seven billion, it is not hard to imagine that the demand for clean and reliable freshwater is increasing as well. With the present population growth rate, providing water to everyone with the water they need will pose a problem with the current habits people have when it comes to water usage. The majority of people tend to use more water than they really need.
As is true with many other sustainability issues, the first step in solving this issue is to start small. In the United States, most of us have access to our own bathrooms in our homes. The following tables demonstrate the average water usage in a non-conserving home and a conserving home from 1989.
What follows is a chart from the Environmental Protection Agency’s website on the average water usage in American homes. An average family of four uses about 400 gallons of water a day (US EPA).
As is evident from the tables and the chart, the majority of the water used in the home comes from the bathroom, and the statistics measured in 1989 have not changed that much over the years. At the same time, the statistics from the average non-conserving home in 1989 also show that water saving devices and practices have been around for a while (i.e. a 16.3 gallon shower versus an 8.2 gallon shower). The technology and practices to save water are obviously not that complex and can be easily applied to any bathroom for a low cost.
The residential sector only uses about 7% of total freshwater withdrawals in the United States (Copeland). However, any sort of effort towards saving water helps the overall conservation effort. Copeland estimates in her study on residential water usage that the residential sector could reduce its water usage by 20% just by using water-saving devices and plumbing fixtures alone. It is especially important to replace these fixtures for newer, higher-efficiency versions because, according to the pamphlet “Water Conserving Devices” from the US Department of the Interior, many old fixtures were indeed designed to use more water than a person needs to accomplish bathroom activities. This was done to ensure that there was enough water available to the consumer, and it has led to overuse and waste of water.
According to the water conservation and sustainability plan of the City of Madison from 2008, the current nationwide daily indoor water use per capita per day is 69.3 gallons, while the average water usage in Madison is 73 gallons per capita per day. If all the fixtures in home bathrooms were to be upgraded to the highest efficiency models, then water usage could drop up to 35% to 45.3 gallons per capita per day (City of Madison). With this conservation plan, Madison wants to reduce water usage by at least 20% to 58 gallons per day by 2020. It is true that the maximum amount of reduction would result from new construction and renovations of current bathrooms, but there are simple and cost-effective solutions that can apply to any bathroom.
The one reason why conserving water can be so difficult for many people is that many will see that they have to make what they see as a substantial sacrifice. Immediate solutions seem to involve a lot of money right away, or the need to use much less water may seem unattractive at first. It is so easy to waste water given what we have. Therefore, this sustainability issue, at its core, can be seen as a behavioral issue among consumers. Pricing adjustments with water utility companies have been considered before. Instead of using a flat rate for any amount of usage, a utility company could charge using an increasing block rate that would charge more per unit of usage. A higher charge will motivate a consumer to use less water. However, studies show that, eventually, the consumer will adjust to the price changes and sink back to previous habits, especially if pricing is not adjusted to inflation (Copeland). Public education programs on water usage are also very helpful towards the conservation effort. However, like the previous solution, people can easily go back to their old, water-wasting habits (US Department of the Interior). Therefore, water-saving devices are the best solution for the water conservation effort because of their cost-effectiveness, their ease of installation, and the fact that they require little effort on the consumer’s part to conserve water.
The toilet uses the most water out of anything in the bathroom. Old toilets would use up to seven gallons per flush (gpf). However, those toilets are a thing of the past, at least in renovations and new home construction, since a federal law states that no toilet manufacturers may produce toilets that use more than 1.6 gpf, which are called low-flow toilets. There are more advanced, high-efficiency toilets (HETs) that use no more than 1.28 gpf. Some even use as low as 0.5 gpf.
Copeland discusses these HETs in her report, too. In Phoenix, Arizona, two subdivisions were studied: one used 0.8 gpf toilets and the other used 3.5 gpf toilets, the most common model at the time of the study. The ultra-low-flush toilets were found to perform just as well or better than the conventional toilets. Users claimed that they needed to clean the ultra-low-flush models more, but were overall satisfied with the toilet (Copeland). This study was done more than 20 years ago, thus providing us with the fact that HETs have been around for a long time. Initially, such toilets can be very expensive. However, one will see from his or her water bill that the toilet will pay for itself quite quickly. Another model called a dual flush cycle provides two different flush cycles: one for solid waste, and one for liquid waste. This model ensures that less water is used to flush liquid wastes (US Department of the Interior). Existing toilets can even be retrofitted with dual flush cycle modifications.
Another easy way to save water from toilet usage is to fill a large plastic container with water and place it in the tank. A stone is needed to keep the container from floating and interfering with the moving parts inside the tank. The container displaces the volume of water that it is occupying in the tank, and therefore less water is used to flush.
Toilet leakages are also a leading waste of water in the bathroom. A leaky toilet can waste up to 200 gallons per day (US EPA). Thankfully, toilet leakages are easy to detect and fix. To test for a leak, simply add a few drops of food coloring into the reservoir. If any of the color leaks into the toilet bowl, then it is easy to replace the ballcock to prevent future leakages (Denver Water Department).
Showers and sinks use a lot of water too, both operating at about two to 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm). This is an especially hard issue to overcome because, unlike a toilet, it is up to the individual how much water they want to use when washing their hands or when showering. Obviously, the easiest solution is to take much shorter showers to save water, but that can seem like a very undesirable idea to many people. The showerheads we have now are a much better improvement over what we had only a few years ago. Showerheads used to discharge as much as five to eight gpm (Copeland). Currently, there are showerheads that provide flow rates as low as 0.5 gpm that spread out the water streams while keeping a desirable water pressure. As for sinks and faucets, sink aerators are very cheap and can be easily attached and work very much like low-flow showerheads. They provide an even flow of water and reduce the splashing that happens with a faucet that does not have an aerator.
Given this information, I believe it is largely the consumer’s responsibility in ensuring that we as a human population conserve the water that we do have. With our current trends and without action on our part to conserve, we could experience water shortages in the near future. However, it does not have to be that way. Water conservation is as easy as taking a shorter shower or replacing old fixtures with newer and cheap ones that ensure less water use.
Over Thanksgiving break, I plan to get my family involved and I will monitor the water usage of all the bathrooms in my home. The first day, I will record how much water will be used without any sort of water-saving device or practice. I also plan to purchase new faucet aerators for all the bathrooms and insert a plastic container in each toilet reservoir to see how much water is saved without using any water-conserving practices. Finally, on the third day, I will combine the two and practice taking shorter showers and use less sink water. I will then extrapolate each set of information and calculate how much money would be spent and how much water would be used in a year according to our current water bill. I want the data collected to be indicative of how easy it is to conserve water and how much money consumer’s can save when they monitor their daily water use.
Works Cited
“City of Madison Water Utility Water Conservation and Sustainability Plan.” Water Conservation. City of Madison, 2008. Web. 20 Nov. 2011. <City of Madison Water Utility Water Conservation and Sustainability Plan>.
Copeland, Claudia. “Water Conservation: Options for the Residential Sector.” Major Studies and Issue Briefs of the Congressional Research Service. Bethesda: University Publications of America, 1989. 1-56. Microform. Major Studies and Issue Briefs of the Congressional Research Service (1989).
Denver Water Department. 55 Facts, Figures, & Follies of Water Conservation. Denver: Denver Water Department, 2004. Print.
United States. Office of Water Research and Technology. Department of the Interior. Water Conservation Devices: Residential Water Conservation. Washington: Dept. of the Interior, Office of Water Research and Technology, Technology Transfer, 1977. Print.
“US Indoor Water Use | WaterSense | US EPA.” US Environmental Protection Agency. Web. 20 Nov. 2011. <http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/pubs/indoor.html>.
Final Project
As I have written before, water is a very abundant resource, but the water we can actually use for daily consumption can only come from very limited sources that, over very short periods of time, will be depleted if we do not act towards conservation efforts. This is certainly the case in arid and dryer climates that experience frequent droughts such as Arizona and other southwestern states, where populations have encountered shortages from their water supply. Despite our current situation with water, it does not appear that people are taking the initiative to use less water, even when many know that they waste so much water each day. The average person uses anywhere between 60-70 gallons of water per day, while family-owned houses use much more water (A family of four uses about 400 gallons of water per day). Most people are unaware of how much water they actually use. After all, it is expensive to install a water meter to actually track water usage. However, I think people are usually aware that they do in fact use too much, but they do not know what to do to save more.
I do not think this problem stems from people’s unwillingness to save water. I am fairly sure that any right-minded person wants to spend much less than they already do on their water bill, so therefore, they want to use less water. The more likely reason people still use so much water lies in the mentality that, in order to conserve water, one has to make substantial sacrifices. From the process of working on my project, I can attest from my experience that making any large sacrifice is not required to successfully conserve water in a home bathroom.
Over Thanksgiving break, I decided to apply my research to my own home. My family and I used the three days to collect data in the following way:
Day #1: Measure how much water my family and I use with existing bathroom devices already in the house and without using any water-saving habits.
Day #2: Measure how much water we would use after installing water-saving devices, but still not using any water-saving habits.
Day #3: Measure how much water we would use by combining both water-saving devices and water-saving habits.
As I would soon find out after conceiving this plan, the bathrooms in my home had already been retrofitted with newer, more efficient showerheads and sink aerators. The showerhead in the master bathroom uses about 1.02 gpm and my and my brother’s showerhead uses 1.7 gpm. All our sinks are fitted with aerators that use 1.8 gpm. The toilets apparently also had always been the high-efficiency 1.6-gpf models. Therefore, I had to adjust my project very slightly. On the first day, I made the following assumptions: that we had 3.5-gpf toilets and 2.5-gpm showerheads and faucets. Most houses have these devices in their bathrooms, so this was a means to make my results more general and applicable to the average household. The results are as follows:
|
Day 1 |
Day 2 |
Day 3 |
|||
|
Shower #1 (min) |
26 |
35 |
12 |
||
|
Shower #2 (min) |
17 |
22 |
14 |
||
|
Sinks (seconds) |
114 |
127 |
88 |
||
|
Toilets (flushes) |
16 |
16 |
11 |
||
|
Total (gallons) |
210.75 |
119.51 |
58.91 |
||
My family already uses much less than an average household, but I think it is always a good thing to conserve as much as we can. From the results of my small project, one can see that on the second day, we used nearly half of what we had used the previous day. We did not even try very hard to save water. In fact, we actually had the showers and sinks running longer that day, and we still saved so much water.
On the third day, we also saved half of the water we had used the second day. Once again, we still did not exert much effort to save water on the third day either. Usually we cannot control how many times the toilet gets flushed, but on that day, members of my family, including myself, were out of the house for short periods of time throughout the day. Either way, the showers and the sinks played a larger role in dictating how much water we used. Sink use was not significantly lower, so it had less of an impact than our showers that day. In general, we cut our shower time in half. While a seven-minute shower may seem like a short time, some may consider it to be long, especially those who live in areas where access to running water may be limited. Regardless, saving nearly a fourth of the water that we usually use did not require much effort at all.
In my view, saving this much water was not a substantial sacrifice at all; it was incredibly easy and just as simple as cutting a shower shorter than usual. It only takes a small bit of discipline and motivation to make this change.
As one can see from this project, a large portion of conserving water in the home bathroom is the devices that can be used to save water. They take quite a bit of monetary investment initially, but they pay themselves off in the end and rather quickly.
As another part of my project, I would calculate how much money we would save on our water bill. The water bill was another factor I had not taken into account when planning my project. Since my house has its own well water source, my family does not pay a water bill to a water and sewage facility. Instead, I compared our water usage to what we would pay if we lived in Madison. According to the billing rates in Madison, water usage correlates directly with how much you would pay. Therefore, the more a house uses, the more that is owed to the water company. On average, Madison residents pay about $570 a year on water and sewage.
- On Day #1, we would have paid $390 a year.
- On Day #2, we would have paid $221.14 a year.
- On Day #3, we would have paid $109.02 a year.
By switching between the habits of Day #1 and #3, a family already has $280 that they can use to invest in water-conserving devices. High-efficiency toilets are generally quite expensive ($150-$300), and replacing each toilet can be very pricey. Any dedicated conservationist is certainly invited to put this much money into multiple toilets, but there is a free solution to saving some water per flush. One can insert a container filled with water into their toilet reservoir. This container displaces the amount of water inside the container, and the toilet will use that much less water per flush. In contrast, sink aerators are very cheap and can be found for only about $2 at any hardware store. Showerheads, too, are fairly inexpensive, and high-efficiency showerheads can be found for about $30. Therefore, buying new aerators and showerheads are a good first step towards home conservation because they require the least monetary investment.
While working on this project, I often thought about how to convince people that water sustainability is a growing problem and how to get people to act upon it. Therefore, I made four small posters that used different aspects of the issue to try to inform people about the issue.
This first poster emphasizes that each person needs to use his or her share of the water and to not overuse, just like how one does not need an entire park bench to sit on it.
The second poster talks about how, by saving water, one can save money. And by saving money, one can invest in ways to save even more water, thus saving even more money.
The third poster emphasizes both the easiness of saving water and the fact that many people ignore the issue completely, especially when people are more likely to go out of their way to save toothpaste than water.
This final poster shows that, by saving water, one can also save the wildlife that depends on or lives in the water. This poster was based on an actual concept for a sink in which the only water supplied to a sink came from a goldfish tank.
On the surface, water conservation in the home seems like a complicated issue, but is actually very simple. People just have to use only the water that they need. Of course, there will always be people who will not believe in the conservation aspect of any issue, but the money aspect of this particular issue will certainly appeal to almost anyone, regardless of their beliefs. Just imagine how much water we could save as a population if everyone were to use only what they needed. We would no longer have water shortages, and more people would generally be more content with the fact that they are both saving money and contributing to a conservation cause. That certainly sounds like a better world to me!
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ILS 252 improves your world 