Water saving ideas
Cape Town, November 2018 (summer)
In the southern hemisphere, winter occurs in the middle of the year. Our year begins with summer and ends with summer.
(The northern hemisphere is different. In the northern hemisphere, summer occurs in the middle of the year. In the northern hemisphere, the year begins with winter and ends with winter.)
I created this web page towards the end of the hot summer early in 2018. Cape Town was experiencing the worst drought in 80 years (some said 100 years) and the dams supplying the metropolitan area were only 20% full. The Cape Town municipality was warning the public that the municipal supply of water to most of the taps in the Cape Town metropolitan area would be switched off when the dams reached 13.5%. From that day onward, members of the public would have to queue for a daily ration of water, which would be just 25 litres per person per day. The public would have to queue every day for the daily ration until good rains fell.
How much is 25 litres? Just two and a half ordinary-sized buckets of water. That is all a person would have for drinking, cooking, washing (body and clothes), cleaning AND flushing the toilet.
All the websites I visited had the same sort of ideas for ways to save water, for example, taking shorter showers, switching the tap off during toothbrushing/handwashing, only running the dishwasher/washing machine when there was a full load and using grey water to flush the toilet. They were useful ideas but the savings would not be enough in the emergency we faced. What we needed were tips that could help stretch the ration of 25 litres as far as possible.
I wanted to find ideas about different ways to do common daily activities so that NO water was used but I could not find this kind of information. I decided to write down some of my ideas to help other people who were also looking for this sort of information. Here are my ideas.
Please note
When your allocation of water is only 25 litres a day, some standards have to slip. At this point, we are talking about what a person has to do to stay alive and stay healthy. My ways to reduce the amount of water a person needs will have an impact of some kind on the environment, some positive and some negative. The negative impacts are difficult to avoid but I have tried to find ways that will not affect the environment too badly.
Click on Doing chores and activities but without using water to go to the page that deals with this topic.
Click on Doing chores and activities but using much less water to go to the page that deals with this topic.
In the southern hemisphere, winter occurs in the middle of the year. Our year begins with summer and ends with summer.
(The northern hemisphere is different. In the northern hemisphere, summer occurs in the middle of the year. In the northern hemisphere, the year begins with winter and ends with winter.)
I created this web page towards the end of the hot summer early in 2018. Cape Town was experiencing the worst drought in 80 years (some said 100 years) and the dams supplying the metropolitan area were only 20% full. The Cape Town municipality was warning the public that the municipal supply of water to most of the taps in the Cape Town metropolitan area would be switched off when the dams reached 13.5%. From that day onward, members of the public would have to queue for a daily ration of water, which would be just 25 litres per person per day. The public would have to queue every day for the daily ration until good rains fell.
How much is 25 litres? Just two and a half ordinary-sized buckets of water. That is all a person would have for drinking, cooking, washing (body and clothes), cleaning AND flushing the toilet.
All the websites I visited had the same sort of ideas for ways to save water, for example, taking shorter showers, switching the tap off during toothbrushing/handwashing, only running the dishwasher/washing machine when there was a full load and using grey water to flush the toilet. They were useful ideas but the savings would not be enough in the emergency we faced. What we needed were tips that could help stretch the ration of 25 litres as far as possible.
I wanted to find ideas about different ways to do common daily activities so that NO water was used but I could not find this kind of information. I decided to write down some of my ideas to help other people who were also looking for this sort of information. Here are my ideas.
Please note
When your allocation of water is only 25 litres a day, some standards have to slip. At this point, we are talking about what a person has to do to stay alive and stay healthy. My ways to reduce the amount of water a person needs will have an impact of some kind on the environment, some positive and some negative. The negative impacts are difficult to avoid but I have tried to find ways that will not affect the environment too badly.
Click on Doing chores and activities but without using water to go to the page that deals with this topic.
Click on Doing chores and activities but using much less water to go to the page that deals with this topic.