Day 171 of our Green Year: Lo-Flo Showers

As many readers will see, we have done a few things to try and conserve water with the shower. We have limited our showers to five minutes and under, and we also collect the shower water (while the water warms up) so that we can use it again elsewhere, like in animal water or to water plants.

We have decided to go another step further now and put in a shower head that is low-flow. Having a low-flow shower head is a great option, especially if you enjoy long showers because it will give you the ability to conserve water, while you stay in the shower for longer. It is possible to have a ten minute shower and only use the amount of water you would in a five minute shower.
However, it should be noted that even with a low-flow shower head, we will not be taking longer than five minute showers and will stick with that rule.

With a low-flow shower head, a family of four can save 160,000 liters of water per year. Old shower heads use about 20 liters of water per minute, while new shower heads use about five liters of water per minute. That is one-quarter of what the old shower heads use and that means a lot of saved water.

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Bad news if you are a penguin. According to the WWF, if the worldwide temperature rises two degrees Celsius, penguins will be extinct. Already, the temperature in the Antarctic Peninsular has risen 2.5 degrees Celsius in the past 50 years, which is five times the global average. Also in the past 50 years, penguin populations have fallen by half.

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Got a photo of you doing something green? Want to send us a letter about your own green journey? Drop us a line at craigbaird@wildmail.com!

Day 138 of our Green Year: Spreading the message of Think Water

A few days ago, Layla and I saw a very interesting television commercial that had a grandfather and grandson in a ghost town. It used to have gold, but that dried up and the people left the town. The grandfather then told the kid that in the future, water will be as precious as gold and we should take care of it now.

It was a great commercial that really made you think, and throughout this green initiative, we have spent several of our blog posts talking about going green by saving water. Just yesterday we saw our neighbor watering their lawn as it rained, and it was a horrible thing to see. We would have said something, but as the man was well into his old age we didn't think it would go very far (sorry to all those elderly individuals who care for the environment, I know you are out there).

The commercial was part of the UN Water For Life initiative, which can be viewed at this website and it is a very important initiative that we should all look at when we turn on the tap. All of this is for the International Decade for Action "Water for Life", which runs from 2005 to 2015. During the first UN decade on water, which ran from 1981 to 1990, more than one billion people gained access to safe drinking water. This second decade initiative is just as important and that is why Layla and I are devoting this post to spreading the message of the UN Water for Life and ThinkWater.ca.

Water is very important, and without it all life on earth will cease, so treat it as a precious resource.