How long do you spend in the shower? If it’s more than eight minutes, that’s above average. Reduce your time washing by just 60 seconds and you could save 15 litres of water with every shower.
But why be bothered with saving water anyway? There’s hardly a shortage in rainy Ireland, and isn’t water free?
Yes, water covers 71 per cent of the planet, but only 1 per cent is available to us as drinking water. We share this with animals and plants, as well as using it in our homes and businesses.
Water isn’t an unlimited resource, and getting clean, safe water to our taps is not without cost.
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Uisce Éireann treats 1.7 billion litres of water for homes and businesses every day. The water comes from rivers, lakes, springs, wells and groundwater, but getting it to your sink or shower is harder than it looks.
There are money and resources involved in sourcing, treating, storing and distributing water all the way to your home. Drinking water needs to meet European Drinking Water standards so that it’s safe to drink. There’s the cost of collecting and treating your wastewater, and to its return to the environment too.
Yes, Ireland experiences high levels of annual rainfall, but much of the water is lost due to old water infrastructure, says Uisce Éireann.
Summer is putting extra pressure on the system, it says. Water supplies in 12 counties officially entered “drought status” earlier this month.
“Really consider” your water usage, Uisce Éireann asks all of us.
The average person in Ireland drinks, cooks, launders, showers, waters and flushes their way through 133 litres of water a day.
If you think you’re pretty careful about your usage, a handy online calculator from Uisce Éireann will tell you how much you are saving compared to others, and what you can do to save more.
First, the kitchen. By only using your dishwasher or washing machine when fully loaded, you’ll save 23 litres of water a week, says Uisce Éireann.
Go a step further and reduce your laundry by one cycle a week and you can save up to 13 litres of water. Drop one dishwasher cycle a week and you can save up to 10 litres of water.
How many of us run the tap to get colder drinking water? Chill your water in a jug in the fridge instead and you’ll save a whopping six litres a day, that’s 42 litres a week.
Running the tap to wash fruit and vegetables wastes a lot of water too. Use a bowl of water instead, and you’ll save 91 litres of water. When you’re finished, you can use it to water your plants.
There are savings to be made in the bathroom too. Reduce your shower time by 60 seconds and you can save over 100 litres in a week.
You can also brush up on savings at the sink. Leave a tap running and it uses six litres of water a minute. Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth, for example, and you could save a whopping 84 litres of water a week.
Fix a dripping tap and you’ll save 150 litres of water.
If you haven’t got a dual full flush, half flush loo, think about installing a toilet cistern bag. Sitting in the cistern, this reduces the amount of available space there. When you flush, less water can travel back to the cistern. This could save up to 105 litres of water every week.
A garden, if you have one, can get pretty parched this time of year. Use a watering can to douse your plants instead of a garden hose and you’ll save an average of 25 litres of water a week.
Running a hose for just one hour uses as much water as a family would typically need in an entire day, says Uisce Éireann.
Better still, if you’ve got space, install a water butt to collect rainwater from your gutters. Using this to water your garden can save an average of 25 litres of water a week.
By using only what we need, we can all play our part in conserving Ireland’s resources.
