Water Conservation

Ten Simple Water-Saving Tips for the Outdoors

Tuesday, June 14, 2011
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With summer here (or just about here in Portland), here are ten simple outdoor water-saving tips to help you conserve water and save money. Adjust your sprinklers so that they’re watering your lawn and garden, and not the street or sidewalk. Water early in the morning (before 10am) or later in the evening (after 6pm) [...]

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What’s Your Daily Water Usage?

Saturday, April 16, 2011
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According to H2oconserve.org, the average American uses approximately 1,200 gallons of water per day.  Thinking I could blow this out of the water (no pun intended), I decided to find out my individual consumption and much to my surprise, it was 1,062 gallons per day (yikes!).  Why so high? While our household excels on almost [...]

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How We Cut Our Water Consumption in Half

Wednesday, March 9, 2011
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I moved in with my fiance’ over a year ago and didn’t quite pay attention to our water consumption.  At the time, it was a full house with his (then) two roommate’s, we had a very full house at four people (way more than our 890 square foot house should hold).  After the roommates moved [...]

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Things I Learned About Living Without Running Water

Friday, November 5, 2010

Some of you may or may not know, but I was raised in Alaska.  I moved to Nome, Alaska when I was a little girl and spent most of my childhood there before moving to Anchorage (the largest city at ~250,000 people).  During the fifth grade, I lived in a small, remote Eskimo Village of [...]

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Be Sensible!

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

The Earth might seem like it has abundant water, but in fact only one percent of all water on the planet is available for humans.  Buy fixtures and products that are water efficient – you can use less water to get the same job done just as well.  When you go shopping, look for the [...]

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Make it a Full Load!

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Run your dishwasher only when it’s full. Don’t pre-rinse dishes – tests show pre-rinsing doesn’t improve dishwasher cleaning, and you’ll save as much as 20 gallons of water per load. When you buy a new dishwasher, look for one that saves water and is Energy-Star rated. Water-efficient models use only about only about 4 gallons [...]

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When It Comes to Drinking Water, DEQ Confirms: 'Reduce First, then Recyle'

Monday, May 3, 2010

If you think it makes more sense to drink tap water in reusable bottles rather than to keep buying bottled water and recycling the containers, you’re absolutely right. A recent DEQ analysis of drinking water delivery systems confirms that it’s best to reduce or reuse first, then recycle. The DEQ study compared dozens of scenarios [...]

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Bucket O' Love

Monday, September 29, 2008

With fall here I wanted to share this earth friendly tip that hits close to home here in the Northwest and is oh, so easy to do. Here goes with the oldest water-saving trick in the book: Collect water in a bucket while you wait for your shower to warm up. Sounds simple enough, right? [...]

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