What uses the most water inside your home?
Toilets use approximately 27% of the water consumed in your home. Older toilets can use up to seven gallons of water per flush. WaterSense labeled toilets could save you a bundle. How much?
Most require 75 to 80 percent less water. If one in ten American households remodeled their bathrooms with Water Sense labeled appliances, as a nation we would save 74 billion gallons of water per year, that’s a savings of about $1.5 billion dollars per year on utility bills.
There are many ways to cut back on your footprint, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Water Sense Program:
- 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 or top-loading, non-agitator machines) use less than 27 gallons per load.
- Washing the dishes with the faucet running can use up to 20 gallons of water, but filling the sink or a bowl and closing the tap saves 10 of those gallons.
- Keeping a pitcher of water in the refrigerator saves time and water instead of running the tap until it gets cold.
- Not rinsing dishes prior to loading the dishwasher could save up to 10 gallons per load.
For more ideas about how to conserve water, visit the Natural Resources Defense Council.