Otis Elementary School, Alameda California. Inside the multipurpose building kids have painted on two contiguous walls. The mural represents Alameda (the island city) but it could represent any other city, instead of the San Francisco Bay, it could be any bay or any lake. What’s striking about this mural is the overall theme, what everyone can or should do to keep their surrounding clean and sustainable. How did these kids picture their environment? Green and blue.

There was one particular corner of this painting mural that grabbed my attention more than other, one that that was titled “Love to save water”, with kids swimming, diving, fishing, … Imagine a summer without their favorite outdoor activities. It is not that unimaginable. California is entering its fourth season of serious drought and many areas might face water restriction. Water is becoming scarce, this problem has become everyone’s problem: fisheries, farms, firemen, … and that is only the letter F and the intend of this post is not to list the numerous problems that comes with not enough water.

There is one behavioral change in my daily life that has made a very significant impact on my water usage, and this, my friends, is water conservationists’ best friend: the bucket. If you have set up your water heater at medium – that trade-off again – it is very likely that every time you turn on the hot water dispenser faucet, there are between 2.5 to 5 gallons of clean water that go down the drain unused. If everyone at home showers together (some people do that, but I won’t recommend it, it can get messy), or successively, you’re already on the right track to save water, but that 2.5 gallons … I personally save at least 5 gallons a day (but that’s because I do not own a dish water, and I run on a different schedule than my sons’). If every household in the US could save 2.5 gallons of water per day, we would end up saving 109.5 billion gallons of water every year. Incredible what we could do with a bucket …

Now how can you use that extra 2.5 gallons of water … water you plants or the lawn, fill up the toilet cistern, use it as a rinse water for the dishes.

A link to learn to save water

The Brazilian organization SOS Mata Atlantica is promoting original way to save water, although we were told as kids this was “disgusting”, tough times call for drastic measures, oh just forget the etiquette and do it outside … I mean keep it on your own lawn, and perhaps you want to avoid collective showers …

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