Climate change is here, its important and its our common responsibility to deal with. As climate change progresses, many people are going to be affected by floods, famine, lost land and human events. And many people feel strongly about calling us all to action – today is blog action day for climate change and we want to do our bit to help our planet.

Climate change obviously affects water. The obvious impact for Victorians in recent years has been hotter weather and less rain leading to the draught and Black Saturday – there is no reason to believe that temperatures will drop back to what they were 20 or 50 fifty years ago, so we need to be careful with our water supplies if we want to survive.

The other impact, eventually, will be an increase in sea levels. In one sense we could be pleased about additional water but the reality is that sea water is too salty for us and desalination plants are expensive and have their own issues.

We believe it is important to work against climate change – at least we can slow it down. Some of the steps we think will help are:

• encourage households to introduce general environmental practises (turing off unwanted lights, saving water, putting on a jumper not a heater, etc)
• encouraging people to add conservation facilities to their homes, such as water tanks, solar hot water systems, solar power generators and good insulation
• reducing our reliance on cars – let’s walk more and travel by train, tram or bus for longer distances
• ensuring all new buildings (not just houses) are energy efficient – that means designing them properly rather than just adding a few environmentally friendly features to a poor design
• educate ourselves and our children about the impact of our daily choices – for example, how much does it cost the environment to choose a Victorian apple compared to an apple from overseas?

What is your favourite tip for reducing climate change? How important do you consider conserving water as part of working against climate change?

Posted: October 15th, 2009 under challenges, general.
Comments: 3

Have you figured out your daily water usage? Is it better (that is, less) than this time last year? If so, what are the biggest changes you have made in the last year?

A lot of water bills now include your water usage per person – our most recent one even compared it to the targeted 155 litres for us  (yes, we are well under – in fact, we use less than half the target each.)

If your bill doesn’t tell you, simply divide your total litres by the number of days covered by the bill and divide again by the number of people in your home. Does the answer surprise you?

Posted: January 30th, 2009 under challenges, general.
Comments: none

One of the most obvious ways of saving water is to make sure you are not loosing water through any leaks. But we often forget these little tasks and focus on bigger ones.

So, how can you check for leaks? Here are some simple tests you can use:

1. look in the bowl of your bathroom, kitchen and laundry basins/sinks first thing in the morning. If the bowl isn’t dry, there could be a tap leak.
2. place a dry sponge or tea towel in the bottom of a sink or basin. If it is still dry a hour or so later (assuming you haven’t used the sink in that time), it is unlikely that tap leaks
3. test how hard you have to turn a tap before it stops dripping. If it is hard work, get it fixed as it will only get worse – and not everyone will be careful in turning it completely off anyway
4. turn off everything in your house that is using water, then go and watch your water meter. If it is still ticking over, something is using water so find where the leak is.
5. add some food dye (just a few drops should do it) to the cistern of your toilet(s) before you go out for a few hours. If the colour is in the bowl when you get back, your toilet is leaking. (Note you will need ot start agin if someone flushes the toilet before you test it!)
6. put a dry bucket under garden taps for a while. If it remains dry, no leak – a wet bucket means leaks…
7. look at your hot water service – is there a pool of water or mud around it? Remeber that a hot water leak also wastes heating energy and costs as well as water so its well worth keeping an eye on.

So we challenge you to find any and all leaks in your house over the next week. Share how you found the leaks, too.

For the sake of comparison, record your water meter readings today and just before you fix any leaks. Then do it again a week or so later. How much water did you save by fixing those leaks?

Posted: December 1st, 2007 under challenges, general, saving water.
Comments: none

When’s the last time you had a sponge bath? Or maybe you don’t remember ever having one?

Personally, I remember having a few back when we had no gas for a while so hot water was scarce. I’d boil the kettle twice, pouring the water into the laundry trough each time. Using a fash washer, I’d sponge myself and by then the water had cooled enough to bath my baby in the trough.

It is much more convenient to jump in the shower – and washing my hair is much easier that way! But the amount of water we ocudl all save by taking the occasional sponge bath is amazing. Did you know that the average three minute shower uses 27 litres of water? Well, that’s for an efficient shower head – it can go up to about 60 litres with a poor shower head.

A sponge bath can be done with 4 litres comfortably, and a lot less if necessary.

So are you up for a challenge? Can you swap to a sponge bath once a week or once a fortnight? If you can get everyone in your household to do it, watch your water metre and see what difference you are making.

Good luck!

Posted: November 12th, 2007 under challenges, saving water.
Comments: none