INDOOR CONSERVATION FACTS
The bathroom is the largest consumer of indoor water. The toilet alone can use 26% of household water. Almost every activity or daily routine that happens in the home bathroom uses a large quantity of water. For example:
• Older toilets use between 3.5 and 7 gallons of water per flush. However, new high efficiency toilets (HETs) require 75 to 80 percent less water.
• A leaky toilet can waste about 200 gallons of water every day.
• A bathroom faucet generally runs at 2 gallons of water per minute. By turning off the tap while brushing your teeth or shaving, a person can save more than 500 gallons of water per month.
Outside the bathroom, there are many opportunities to save water. Here are some common water efficiency measures, along with a few solutions to those problems you may not have known existed:
• High-efficiency washing machines can conserve large amounts of water. Traditional models use between 27 and 54 gallons of water per load, but new, energy and water conserving models (front-loading, top-loading, non-agitator) use only 16 to 20 gallons per load.
• Washing the dishes with an open tap uses 30 gallons of water, but filling the sink or a bowl and closing the tap saves 25 of those gallons.
• Garbage disposals use 4 to 6 gallons per day.
• Eliminating the rinsing of dishes prior to loading the dishwasher could save up to 25 gallons per load.
