Use them more often than showers and bathtubs. |
Sunshine in
your bath
Winters are cold and it’s nice to have a warm (hot) bath.
So why should your conscience (or more likely, electricity bill) hurt you? Try out a Solar
Water Heater (SWH). Everyone can share the sun you see, and it’s free. SWH systems
either heat up water directly or a heat transfer fuel like a water-glycol mix, in
collectors on a south-facing roof. There are quite a few solar water heaters in the
markets. They might be more expensive than the regular geysers initially but that cost
quickly disappears.
A Solar Water Heater designed in IIT, Delhi
Pots and pans
Flush! The toilet typically uses 30–40% of total
household water use, and even more in commercial premises. Each time you flush, you send
at least 10 litres down the drain. Shifting to a smaller, more efficient 6
litres-per-flush toilets have been shown to reduce toilet water use by 23% to 46%. Putting
a 1 litre or 1.5 litre bottle into the cistern also makes your toilet
‘low-flush’ reducing the amount flushed. A study done by EPA in US shows the use
of high-efficiency toilets through new construction and normal replacements is estimated
to save in excess of 29 billion litres per day by 2020. This savings is nearly 19% of the
total amount of water supplied by US public water systems in 1995.
In the flush system, water is used not just to clean the toilet bowl, but also to
transport the excreta into rivers which then no longer remain clean. A family of five that
uses such a toilet contaminates more than 150 thousand litres of water in a year because
of transport of just 250 litres of excrement. EcoSan or Environmental Sanitation is one of
the methods where there is recovery of all nutrients from faeces, urine and greywater
(kitchen and bath water). You not only get good fertiliser, but also prevent water
pollution. Paul Calvert, Director of EcoSolutions, is someone who’s working
successfully on EcoSan in Kerala. You can write to him at: paulc@vsnl.com
Here’s a link that you can check out:
http://www.enviroalternatives.com/toilets.html#COMPOSTING TOILETS
 Catch the Rain!
Where does all the water come from? Do you use up loads of precious groundwater or treated
supply water to wash your clothes and flush your toilet? Try rainwater harvesting. Though
not the only answer, it helps you to put back a large amount of water back into the
underground aquifers. Water that just runs off otherwise. |
