Comment by philipwhiuk
6 months ago
> Install a rain butt to collect rainwater to use in the garden.
This assumes water is inconsistent. Once the rain butt is full, there's no more benefit. And then in a long dry season once it's emptied, it's not saving any more.
> Fix a leaking toilet – leaky loos can waste 200-400 litres a day.
If you're on a water meter you're already incentivised to fix this - so a better answer is water meters.
> Use water from the kitchen to water your plants.
Assuming you're using waste water, which most people won't.
> Avoid watering your lawn – brown grass will grow back healthy.
Households with lawns are rarer than they used to be - a big red flag has always been that hosepipe bans never applies to golf courses which use a large amount of water to keep their grass green all year.
> Turn off the taps when brushing teeth or shaving.
A few minutes of water p/person per day.
> Take shorter showers.
Probably minimal and potentially a hygiene problem.
> Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.
Negligible at best.
I agree. Apparently the UK average daily water usage is ~140l, so "fix leaks" dwarfs all the others.
If you're irrigating your garden, that's also going to be a big one, but quite often you get a hosepipe ban in the dry season anyway.
Someone with a water meter should try these measures and see if they notice a difference; I bet they don't. The data center one is of course unmeasureable by the individual.
Gardens? Gardens that often cool their environments?
Tennis courts: during one of the last droughts the local tennis club kept watering their courts -- sand. The upper class twits give a F* about preserving water. Why should anybody let their plants die for those f*ers who waste it big times?
Well, yes. Also golf courses. You've hit the nail on the head that conservation hairshirt measures need some solidarity, or visibly even handed enforcement, otherwise they're just insulting.
> Assuming you're using waste water, which most people won't.
My household (in the US) uses water from cooking rice to water plants, but I cannot imagine many UK households cook rice to be able to do that.
How? When I use water to cook rice, the rice absorbs that water. That's kind of how you know it's done. How much water are you using when cooking rice that there's some left over to use in the plants?
The "standard" method used by East Asians is to wash the rice several times until water is clear before cooking. This waste water is said to be good to water plants with and accounts for most of the water needed.
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Rather than the absorption method, the rice can be cooked in a larger volume of water and then poured through a sieve once it's cooked.