By Dana Mears
Small changes in our behaviours or daily routines can have big impacts. Starting to floss, meditate or make your bed can help us feel healthier, but, what about a behaviour that makes you feel greener?
The bathroom uses more water than any other part of the modern home. When you stop and consider everything in there, it isn’t surprising: your standard bathroom (which most of us have several of) there is a toilet, a faucet and a shower — all of which use water.
For each element of our bathroom routine, there is a small change we can make that will help us use water more wisely and save money.
Let’s start with the shower. Shorter showers use less water. Try this: bring your phone into the bathroom and sing along to your two favourite songs. When the songs are finished, so is your shower. No 20-minute rock ballads though, that’s cheating.
What about the water wasted while you’re waiting for the shower to get hot? Why not use it to fill up your watering can to take care of your household plants?
Dental hygiene and beard maintenance can consume lots of water if you let them. A running bathroom faucet can waste as much was as two large milk jugs worth of water in two minutes —that’s eight litres, down the drain! Turn off the water while you brush your teeth and you’ll conserve the water instead.
For those grooming a beard, get a bowl of hot water to rinse your razor instead of keeping the water running.
Replacing an old toilet with a new low-flow toilet can really reduce your water usage. A simple and less expensive fix is to place a full plastic water bottle inside your toilet tank: this takes up space and reduces the amount of water used for each flush.
Water conservation is about minor changes to our routines, like flossing. It might feel like something you need to think about.
But once you get into the habit, it becomes part of a healthy routine. Let’s change those bathroom behaviours!
