5 Easy Ways to Save Water

We all need to do our bit for our planet, whether it is switching to an electric vehicle, using eco friendly products , reducing your waste, or saving water. When you live in a climate where it feels as though it rains quite a lot, it can be hard to imagine that you need to save water but even here in the UK we are seeing changes due to global warming and with drier spells, warmer and longer summers, it has been predicted that if we don’t start to act now we could be facing bigger problems by 2050.

Saving water doesn’t have to be tricky, it just takes a little change in our daily behaviours and a little more awareness. I found some great water facts over at Waterwise which really highlights how much we take water for granted:

• The average water used per person per day is 143 litres in England and Wales, 165 litres in Scotland and 145 litres in Northern Ireland.
• In 2010 the UN recognised the human right to water and sanitation, meaning everyone has the right to sufficient, continuous, safe, acceptable and affordable water.
• As well as the water that comes out of our taps and toilets, there is hidden water in the products we buy. For example, one cotton t-shirt has about 2,700 litres of water embedded in its production, which is around 49 baths full of water! 
• Although the Earth is often called the blue planet, out of all the water on the planet there is less than 1% accessible freshwater for us to use. The Antarctic ice sheet holds about 90 per cent of the freshwater that exists on the Earth’s surface.

Due to these facts, I thought I would share 5 easy ways to save water…

Turn off The Tap:

It’s something we’ve all heard all of our lives, isn’t it? Turn the tap off whilst brushing your teeth. It is a really simple step that you can take but it can make a big difference. Leaving a tap running for 2 minutes twice a day can surprisingly lead to 12 litres of water being wasted each time you brush! Not only is this costing our environment it is also costing you. So, get into a good habit of turning it off as you brush and demonstrate this to your family members too.Collect Rainwater:

Collecting rainwater can be really simple and really effective both for the environment and for your pocket. During the summer months, how often do you turn to the garden hose and allow too much water to simply run away? We’ve probably all been guilty of that but did you know that if you used a water butt, buckets, barrels and so on to water your plants you could save up to 5,000 litres of water each year?!!

Use The Dishwasher:

You may think that washing up by hand would use less water but in actual fact, if you fill your dishwasher up each time and choose the eco setting, you will end up saving water.

Boiling Water:

It’s no secret that us Brits love a good cuppa but how much is this costing us in water as well as electricity? If you overfill your kettle each time and boil both will have a negative impact on the environment as well as your utility bills. So I have 2 tips here. Firstly, only ever boil the amount of water that you require. This will not only save on water wastage but it will also save on electricity. Alternatively, you could go a step further and opt for my second tip which is to boil a full kettle, enough to give you a day’s worth of tea/coffee and then put this into a flask. The flask will keep your water hot all day and an extra bonus is that you won’t have to wait for the kettle to boil each time.

Wash Less Often:

Yes, she said it, don’t wash as much! That may sound easier said than done but I have lived by this rule for the last few years and it has been revolutionary not to just my workload but also in saving water. How we have gone about this is by only washing items when they are truly dirty or smelly, airing clothing outside instead of washing, spot cleaning marks, having certain clothes just for around the house or for things like messy play and taking more care of clothes after each use by hanging them up. I have more tips on how to achieve this in this blog post here. And just like with the dishwasher, when you do put washing on, use the eco settings to save on water usage.

Other easy ways to save water:

There are other ways to save water which include taking shorter showers, using water displacement bags in your cisterns, using bath water for watering plants etc but I felt these 5 tips were probably the most approachable to begin with. If you do start using them, keep a close eye on your water bill too and see how much you can get it down by. Being more eco-friendly can truly be a win-win.

Emma Reed is a Mother and Blogger who lives in Hampshire with her 2 children, Jake (8) and William (4), and her husband, Rob. She began her parenting blog back in 2016 when she self-published a book on baby teething. Her blog is inevitably what led her to begin living a more eco-friendly lifestyle and she now uses her platforms to show others how they can also adapt their own lives to incorporate these changes. You can read her blog over at www.emmareed.net or follow her on Instagram over at @emmareed_writes