Conserving Water in the Home

Water is one of the most precious resources on our planet. While our planet is 70 percent water, only three percent of that water is fresh water. Of that three percent, only one percent of the fresh water is available to us, the rest is locked in ice. Around the world, water supplies are beginning to dry up and that means water conservation is extremely important. In our homes, we can work to make our homes water-smart by following some very simple green tips:

1. When your shower is warming up, you are wasting a lot of water. You can fix this by putting a shower water container under the tap while your shower warms up. Once your shower is warmed up, take the container out. Then you can use that container to water plants and for your pets because it is plain water from the tap, with no soap in it.
2. Only water your lawn once per week. Your lawn only needs one inch of water per week and many people over-water. Keep an eye on the weather because if you are expecting rain that week, you will not need to water. Also, only water in the evening and mornings, otherwise the sun will just evaporate the water away.
3. Collect water with rain barrels outside. You can collect a lot of water when it rains and you can use that water inside on your plants, for your pets and even to water your garden later.
4. The more adventurous of water conservers will try a navy shower. A navy shower, which comes from people on submarines, consists of:
   1. Get into shower and turn it on.
   2. Once you have been soaked, turn the shower off.
   3. Soap yourself up.
   4. Turn shower on and rinse off.
   5. Turn shower off and get out.
5. You can practice the rule in your home of “If it is brown, flush it down. If it is yellow, let it mellow”. You waste a lot of water with each flush, roughly 1.6 gallons per flush with lo-flow toilets. That is more water than people in Africa get all day. Saving water this way is easy and it saves you money as well.
6. When you are brushing your teeth, turn off the water. If you brush your teeth twice a day and leave the water running while you do so, you waste seven gallons of water per day. Turn the water off while you brush, and only turn it on when you rinse. This way, you save a lot of water every single day.

It is very easy to save water in your home. Each day, people waste gallons of water through their activities. In North America, a typical person uses twice the amount of water that people do in Europe. Even better, you can save money by conserving water because you will not be letting money essentially go down the drain anymore. There is a finite amount of fresh water available to us, a lot of that is wasted and polluted, so we need to conserve as much as we can.

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Plastics Pose A Threat To Sea Life Right Now

It has long been held that plastic waste, when dumped in the sea, posed more of a risk to careless swimmers as a bludgeoning hazard than it did to aquatic life as a pollutant. The received wisdom was that plastics were hardy materials likely to release their contaminants over time. Now, according to new research from scientists presenting to the American Chemical Society (ACS), it seems that that is not the case. It may well be, in fact, that plastics break down with ease and speed in our oceans, and are posing a threat to sea life right now.

It is well known by anyone who has seen footage of “Beaches from Hell” that often waste thrown in the ocean will wash up on the beach. This may not be desirable, but the fact that it was at least visible brought some strange comfort, at least to those of us who could ignore that the beach itself was an ecosystem all of its own. However, it is fair to say that a more than significant amount of plastic waste thrown into the sea never finds its way to the shore. Some stays in the ocean and interferes with marine life directly – as anyone who has ever tried to free a fish or a seagull from a plastic bag can attest – and a lot of it, we can now say without fear of contradiction, breaks down while in the ocean, releasing toxins that do their own brand of harm to the marine population.

Famously, the expanse of water between Hawaii and California has become known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. What is less well-known is a little statistic which states that the area is twice the size of Texas. Think of how much marine life finds its home in that area, and consider then that the water is not just polluted by bottles, bags and other detritus, but by the component parts of that detritus. Although not as viscerally horrible as the Exxon Valdez oil spill, this is a major problem and will require attention. While we have always assumed plastic in the ocean to be undesirable, now we find the true extent of how much this is the case.

It emerges that plastic when thrown into the ocean reacts extremely badly as it is exposed to the rain and the sun while already weakened by the saltwater in the ocean. The contamination caused by this has an immediately obvious negative effect – poisoning marine life – but the secondary effects it can have by entering the food chain are no less concerning. At the moment we do not know what shape the effects could take, but previous studies in animals have demonstrated that Bisphenol A – a major constituent of many plastics – can disrupt animal hormone systems. Although it would be unwise and unhelpful to become too apocalyptic in our vision of the effects this could have, it bears attention and reminds us that vigilance is vitally important. The consequences of ignorance could yet be very damaging.

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Unquenchable?

Leading US legal scholar Robert Glennon is currently touring to promote his latest book, a factual study which is being taken so seriously that he is getting air time on some of the highest-rating shows in America – including Jon Stewart’s Daily Show which has had such guests in the last year as the then Senator Barack Obama, the former President Bill Clinton and father of the US political chat show Larry King. Robert Glennon’s issue is linked to one hugely important part of everyone’s life – water. Quite simply, the message goes, America is wasting water. And it’s not just America, either. There are water crises in Asia, parts of Europe and in Africa too. The very real danger is that if people living in countries with what should be a plentiful supply of water don’t stop wasting what they have, then our future could be looking dangerously dry.

Robert Glennon’s book, Unquenchable, is the story of how America is wasting water in ways which are in some cases breathtakingly wasteful and in others seemingly well-intentioned. Witness how the energy lobby in Washington are pushing for the greater use of biofuels, and then consider that to make one gallon of biofuel is said to cost thousands of gallons of water. According to Robert Glennon, America simply does not have that kind of water to give away. It may seem like America, Europe and other areas with a similarly rainy climate are at little risk from drought, but if the current reckless overuse of water continues there could be some damage done that will not be undone in a hurry. We may well find that scarcity will lead to some extremely negative repercussions.

In Africa and parts of sub continental Asia we have seen the results of major drought, as crops wither and die leading to serious famine. The water crisis we are currently seeing – albeit in a very limited way – has the potential to change the face of the world as we know it for the worse, and it is not just Robert Glennon who believes this. It needs to be taken into account now that without government attention and innovative thinking in countries where ready alternatives exist, we will be looking not at a potential crisis, but some years down the line at a financial crisis in some parts of the world and a humanitarian one elsewhere.

It is all the more telling that as America faces up to a real crisis, one nation in a position of relative strength right now is its neighbor to the north, Canada. Currently sitting on around 10% of the world’s water, Canada will feature very prominently in discussions the longer this situation perpetuates itself. It is to be hoped that things will not get so far that Canada is required to help out with America’s water crisis – but with the crises developing elsewhere it must be recognised that the old adage “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” has never been more appropriate.

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Live Green Simply

Whether you have concluded yourself, whether a friend or family member has badgered you, or you have finally been guilt-tripped by the constant streams of information, it would seem likely that you have decided that greener living is a necessity for a better future, and you are not alone. As we live in a world of finite resources, the fact is that we are all going to have to make some changes, some of which may take more effort than others. If you can get ahead of the curve and make some of these changes now, so much the better, because the older a habit gets the harder it is to kick it.

Some simple tips on living a greener life can make a big difference to how energy- and resource-efficient you are – and they can start with the ridiculously simple ones. For example, re-using things that can still be useful. Have you seen a landfill recently? Not only do they take up a lot of space, but half the things that are there may well have still had some use left in them. Now, no-one is saying you need to hang out old tea  bags to give them a second use, or that hygiene products can be used longer than the convention suggests, but other things can make a difference.

Just for example, re-using the bags you get at the supermarket or the shops is something that many people are doing. You can take it further, though. Think of the amount of old receptacles that you throw out. Putting them to another use – old jars to keep loose change in, old margarine tubs for leftover food – can not only save you money, but can make a difference ecologically. Recycling is not all about leaving stuff out for the garbage men, after all.

Another simple household tip is one that you can follow while cooking. Chances are that your hob features four rings of differing sizes. Are you using the correct sized pan on the correct ring? It may sound like a stupid question, but so many people put a tiny pan – for heating milk, say – on a larger ring, with the upshot being that as well as heating the pan, the ring is heating a bunch of air around it, to no good effect. Match pans to rings, and save energy.

Staying in the kitchen, you have the refrigerator. Are you making it do too much work? Yes, its job is to keep things cold, but that job is harder if the refrigerator is constantly lying open, or is being opened and closed with great regularity. If you are going to need a bunch of stuff from there over a period of time, get it all out before you start whatever you are doing. Keeping the temperature constant wastes a lot less energy.

Additionally, instead of putting warm food into the refrigerator, leave it to cool first. This is a good idea for two reasons – firstly, a sharp drop in temperature can cause bacteria to thrive in the food and secondly, the warmer the item going in there, the harder the appliance has to work to get it to the correct temperature. Wasting energy happens so easily, but these are just a few ways you can reduce your burden.

Let The Green Journey Begin

I believe it was Kermit the Frog who first said, “It’s Not Easy Being Green”. And he had a point, too, because it seems like hardly a day goes by without new information coming to light about something that we had previously considered to be perfectly acceptable, rendering that thing now completely beyond the pale. Trying to do our best by the planet is a tough job, but it’s also worthwhile. Fighting the good fight and keeping our planet in some sort of condition that we will be happy to hand over to our gran dkids, though far from easy (we hear you, Kermit!), is something that, with a bit of forethought, can be done very efficiently, and can even be a lot of fun.

We will look to bring to light different ways of keeping yourself environmentally sound. Knowing how to harness things that are already freely available and use them in a different way can make you more environmentally friendly. There is also a certain amount of myth busting to be done – where people pay lip service to green issues and swear that they are environmentally aware, they should be made to put their money where their mouth is.


“Green Energy” is a big buzz phrase right now. With car companies looking to plant their flags on green territory by developing hybrid vehicles, and some going as far as to develop fully electric cars, it is dawning on everybody that we are living in changed times, and that the change is not over yet. What are the most environmentally friendly companies? Who are the most environmentally friendly governments? How can we ensure that we are doing everything possible to make the future environmentally sound? These are all things that we will hope to illuminate for you.

As well as all of this, we plan to provide a bit of a different slant on the Green world. How to eat Green, drink Green, travel Green – sure, we will have all of this, but there will also be tips on how to bring a green tinge to every other part of your life while not hurting your pocket and not having any less fun. Green issues may not have caught everybody’s imagination just yet, but as people come to realize that a Green life is compatible with the way they want to live their life, things will come naturally.

So welcome, and let us know what your views are on these issues and any others that play a part in the environmental debate. We want to know what you think, and what you want to see and read here. Do you find it easy being green, or do you find that it’s too hard to live a green life in a world that has gone so far down another path? We do not claim to have all of the answers, and if you have any that we do not, then we’re always happy to hear from you.