Think Globally Act Locally | The Power Of R

When I was growing up my family and I got our fresh water from a well. We lived on a rural property (outside of city limits) so that meant we needed to conserve our water and not waste any of it. We didn’t have access to city water. The well was only sixteen feet deep so that meant it was full in the winter but often ran dry in the summer. We needed to be really careful about how much water we used for almost nine months of the year. Our daily showers had to be efficient, we never let the tap run, and watering the plants needed to be as direct as possible. There was no room for slip and slides or massive water fights.

When you live on a limited water supply it's always a priority to make sure there is enough water for your whole family to drink. In addition to that you need water to flush your toilet. Finally, you need some water to water your garden and plants with. If you run out of water in the summer, like we often did, the plants suffer the most. We would have enough for drinking but not enough to water a large garden. My dad dug a second well that we used just for garden water. That was helpful but expensive and not everyone on my street could afford to do that.

So here are a couple of great tips for saving grey water. This is water that you can use on garden plants all year round. The first and most effective thing you can do is use a rain collecting barrel on your house. This barrel connects to your gutters. When it rains all of the water flows into your gutters and then into your barrel. You shouldn’t drink this water but the plants sure can. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can collect 100 Liters of water. The second tip is one of my favorites and I’ve mentioned it before in a past blog. When you take a shower bring an old ice cream bucket with you. During the shower the bucket will fill up with all the residual water that misses or bounces off of your body. That’s cool. You can collect 4 Liters of water with no effort. Use it on your plants outside. “Thanks for the drink, dude,” they’ll say.

These tips don’t take much effort and they conserve a tremendous amount of water. They will ensure that our city services, aquifers and water tables are always full of good drinking water. Fresh clean water for drinking is so precious. Plenty of rain water falls from the sky in the winter but most of it never gets into the ground. It runs into the ocean, evaporates or gets used by the forest plants before it can be collected for us to drink. Canada has most of the world’s fresh water but every day we have less because of pesticide use and pollution, urbanization and industry, and waste. The world is looking at us for leadership in water conservation because as the planet gets warmer, there is less clean fresh water for drinking.

Rethink how you use your water and do a Water Audit in your household (an inspection of how you use your water). This will help you figure out new ways to conserve water and protect it. For more information on Water Wise gardening click here.