water | ILS 252 improves your world

In my introduction post, I said I would monitor water usage in my house over Thanksgiving weekend. Thankfully, my family was very cooperative and I was able to track the bathroom water usage easily. However, I will have to revise my project a little bit. I said I was going to refit the faucets with new aerators and insert water displacement containers in my toilets.

Well, it turns out that every faucet already has a high efficiency aerator and all our toilets are high efficiency as well (1.6 gpf). We even have water-saving shower heads. This shouldn’t change my project too much; I will just have to calculate how much water would be used with the average, non-conserving devices.

One thing that is throwing me off, though, is that since we have our own source of well water, we actually don’t pay a water utilities bill. My original plan was to calculate how much money we would have saved on our water bill, so I will just have to find the average amount people pay a year.

This week, I will be making water conservation awareness posters. I have juggled ideas of making step-by-step posters or just posters that have a straight-up message to conserve water now. I’ve decided on the latter because I believe posters work best when there is less to read. People need to be able to see a sense of urgency with regards to conservation, and thus they will feel the need to act now. I’ve already got some ideas on what these will look like, and it’s just a matter of finding good source images and opening up PhotoShop.

ILS 252

TA: Peter Allen

November 23, 2011

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>.