Water Challenge: Utilities Bill Information

I have to admit, I haven't looked at our utilities bill for a long time. We pay our bill each month with an automated service, and my husband is the one who typically checks on our household bills. I quickly discovered that there is a lot of useful information here that allows me to drill down to our daily household water usage, how our water usage compares to the average San Franciscan, and numerous tips on how to use less water. I was really impressed with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission website.
Using their data, I determined that our average water usage from May 1 2014 - February 12 2015 has been less than the average 4-person household in San Francisco, which is 49 gallons per person per day. During that period we used 33 gallons per person per day. Go, us!

 However, being under this average, which is well below the average American's use, is still substantially higher than it could be. We are clearly above the world average water usage of 13 gallons per person per day.

What is really utilitarian about my utility bill is that since my water usage data are provided on a day-to-day basis, it is possible to determine the days my family used the most and least water, and we can track that usage to our behaviors on that day. For example, on February 4, we used 201 gallons. On that day, we were preparing to take off for the weekend, so I did a bunch of laundry, and we may have taken several showers too. This reminds me that we could probably do a better job of wearing our clothes multiple times before washing them. I know I am guilty of throwing things in the dirty clothes hamper too often.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an informative website that provides data on overall water use in the USA, although their graph dates back to 1999.

My utilities bill brings up a couple additional thoughts. These data could be a tool of "social facilitation", a tendency for behavior to improve when in the presence of other people. Should we be talking about our water bills more and commenting on what we have done in the privacy of our own homes to decrease water usage? Perhaps if we generally had a better sense of how our neighbors use water, this knowledge could spur more efficient water usage through creating new norms.

I believe this is what the SFPUC is trying to do with their website data, conservation tips, incentives to replace shower heads and toilets, etc., but this has certainly been off my radar, and water usage has not been a hot topic in my community! I haven't started keeping a day-to-day diary of how we use water (e.g. # of loads of laundry, showers, baths, watering the garden), but this could assist in tracking daily water usage to particular behaviors. I will attempt to implement this for the remainder of our water challenge month to generate more ideas on how to use less water. Additionally, SFPUC offers free home evaluations. I will have that done in the near future and report on any additional ways to conserve water.

As for an update on the water challenge so far, we have used an average of 18 gallons of water per person per day since February 12! This is a reduction in our daily usage by about 45%. Interestingly the significant change in our household water use corresponds to the graph above showing that flushing the toilet and taking showers accounts for about 43% of domestic water use.

My husband and I think we can sustain our new practices, which is key, I think to permanently changing our ways. The changes we have made are small ones and don't impact us in any real way. Here is what we have succeeded in doing differently so far this month:

1. We are taking navy showers and not waiting for the water to heat up before showering. We may buy a tankless water heater to make our showers a bit more luxurious in the long term - warm instead of partially cold - but we have both found we don't feel like we are missing much to take substantially shorter showers. I am starting to think about a long soak as a treat and something to look forward to. Here is where the magic happens:

2. We have been flushing the toilet about every 3 pees. As long as we keep the lid closed, this has been no problem and not stinky. We haven't found our cat drinking the yellow water. Sometimes our kids forget about the water challenge and flush more often, but flushing has decreased.

 3. I have been collecting some of my used kitchen sink water - water I used to wash my hands or rinse a dish - and throwing it on my potted plants outside my kitchen window instead of collecting fresh water. So far so good.

4. I have only been running full loads of dishes and laundry, and we are doing a better job of wearing clothes 2-3 times before washing. I am trying to teach my kids to examine their clothes before tossing them in the hamper.

Finally, I would also like to know what is an equitable and sustainable quantity of water to use each day. This is complicated, but if anyone out there has a reasoned estimate, please let me know how many gallons of water each person on Earth could expect to have for daily use if, theoretically our planet's available fresh water was parsed equally and sustainably among 7.3 billion people. That is the goal I seek.

The Water Challenge: Be (More) Like Mozambique

 Mozambique appears to be the country using the least water per capita (as of 2006). In contrast to an average Mozambiquian’s use of 4 liters (~1 gallon) of water per day, the average American uses 575 liters (~152 gal) per day. Worldwide, an average Earth inhabitant uses/needs ~50 liters (~13 gallons) of water each day.

Quality of life is poor when a person has access to a mere 4 liters (1 gallon) of water each day. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recommend a minimum of 20 liters (~5gal.) of water for sufficient drinking water and personal hygiene and closer to 50 liters (~13 gallons) of water when factoring in bathing and laundry. (See p. 34 in the United Nations Development Programme report.) It turns out, people use a lot less water when they have to haul it around to use it.

 What would the average American need to give up to cut water use by about 90%? Perhaps we should imagine the effort it would take to transport our daily water on our backs every time we turn on the faucet.

My family will face “The Water Challenge” this month. Our family of 5 – 2 adults, 2 kids and 1 cat – will do everything we can to cut our water use. We will keep track of how we do by comparing our water bills ending in mid-February (typical usage month) to mid-March (challenge month). 

As we do the Water Challenge, we will record all the things we changed to try to reduce our water consumption. We will also comment as we go along on on how our new habits feel and whether we think we could maintain our new lifestyle. Our initial strategies include the following: 

*  "If it's yellow, it's mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." In the last couple days, we have peed ~ 3 times before flushing and kept the lid down so our cat won't drink the pretty yellow water. Reported new odors: no change when the lid is closed!

*  We are also trying out the "navy shower", which basically means, only let the water run to get wet and to rinse off. While soaping, shampooing, shaving, the water is turned off.

*  My husband and I have tried to not let the shower and sink water run until it warms up. This means, we have to be sweet to each other and take turns being the one receiving the cold shower. This also means that we are attempting to take our showers in a row to optimize the warm water. (After taking a cold shower, one starts to ponder the pros and cons of a tankless water heater too.)

*  Our kids are really excited about bathing less. We are all planning to shower about 2x per week - a little more than the traditional Saturday night soak.

We challenge you to join The Water Challenge! Let us know how you did, and give us more hints on how to use less water! I will add them as they come in. Our goal is to decrease our water use by at least 25% this month.

In the days to come, I will post "the data" about our household water use the last few months - pre- and post- low flow shower heads and toilets. I will be comparing our usage to the average San Franciscan too.

A Jumble of Normal, Everyday Panic

I see a haze of pollution floating over San Francisco today. It is January 2015, and the 8^th Spare the Air day in a row with no rain on the horizon. And yet we all jump in our cars and go about doing things and consuming like any other day. We have obligations, after all. I am often driving kids to and from school and classes. My husband drives 30 minutes down the Peninsula to his job. We go out to dinner, go to the movies, visit friends. We drive to the airport to go on vacation. We buy gifts. We board a cruise ship for a week over Christmas break. Today, I sit in standstill traffic smelling exhaust, trying to make it over to Oakland in time to see a movie at the Piedmont Theatre with a friend. It is 15 miles away, and I abort my plan after I realize I won’t make it in time; it would take an hour to get there. My kids and husband drive up to Tahoe to ski for the weekend, but there is no snow. I order new clothes and food from Amazon that will be delivered very quickly to my home in a pristine cardboard box. I have Mission Chinese food delivered, or Spicy Bite, or whatever I want.

Am I doing enough to be sitting in my plug-in Prius and eating a largely organic and vegetarian diet? Is it enough that I only drink California wine and tap water made sparkling with my Soda Stream? Am I doing my part in composting and recycling and even taking my plastic bags to Safeway for recycling? Is it enough that I correctly dispose of old batteries, light bulbs, pharmaeuticals, paint, chemicals, and electronics? Is it sufficient to reuse items instead of putting them in the trash and typically bringing my own bags to the store?

What should I really be doing to save our ocean, our air, our planet? Should I stop drinking coffee and eating bananas because neither can be locally produced? Isn’t it great that I just had 2 low-flow toilets and shower heads installed? Does this really help, or is it just a miniscule drop in a very large bucket? Is it better for the earth that our cars are hybrids, or should we have not purchased new cars in favor of using the old ones as long as possible like that lady who had nearly 600k miles on her car? 

Should we sell our cars – yes, our family has 2 – in favor of only using public transit and bicycles? Should we switch schools and jobs so all of that would be practical? Should we all be living in the same place, our extended family making up a tribal group, the way people used to live? Should we never take another airplane flight or drive to see my family in Idaho and Washington? Should I not remodel my house? Is it wrong to want to travel the world? Should entire cities move and become more densely populated to use resources more efficiently? Should we never buy another packaged product that produces waste? Should my lifestyle look more like someone who lives in Mozambique, using only 1 gallon of water per day compared to the world average of 13? (The average American uses 80 – 100 gallons of water per day at home.)  

Is the problem already so big that only drastic action will save us? Or is it true that every small action makes a difference?

What about the polar bears and the massive extinction that our oceans are facing as of last week? I say “last week” because that is when I heard the news story. I know, though, that this has been a long time coming and also a crisis that has been brewing since the Industrial Revolution. What about the birds dying in some unknown goo in the San Francisco Bay right now that isn’t really getting cleaned up, because clean-up is generally paid for by the petroleum industry? What about the millions of pieces of plastic trash and discarded fishing nets that kill sea life?

What about that new fact that the coral reefs around Cuba seem to be doing much better than reefs adjacent to populations that have not been living in austerity across the last 50 years?

Should we all really be talking about population control as the real culprit of environmental degradation now that there are over 7 billion people in the world, compared to only 1 billion in 1800 and many fewer than that for the bulk of human history? The population of humans has skyrocketed in the last 200 years, corresponding with the Industrial Revolution. Should we be alarmed that, in 1970, there were only half the people there are now on our planet? Why is anyone who cares about the environment having more than 2 children if this is true? Perhaps lifestyle matters less than the sheer number of people trying to eat and live well? What will our earth be like for my 2 kids age 6 and 9?

Should there be some kind of social contract if technological health care will generally keep us all alive into our eighties? Should we think long and hard about how we are living and the resources we are using, if we want to share what we have with several billion more people?

Am I overly panicked? Would I lead a happier life if I just didn’t think about all this so much? It seems like the people around me who are proceeding with their lifestyles unquestioningly seem to be having the last laugh because they are not stressed out. Whatever I might do to “do my part” may not have any significant impact anyhow, so perhaps the best action I could take for my own mental health and that of my family’s would be to have fun and do what I want while it lasts? To stop being so serious and OCD about all this?

How can I take drastic action – and is that even necessary – if no one else stops using their cars or taking flights or consuming or adjusting their normative lifestyle in any significant way? How is change possible?

Deep breath with eyes closed. I am comforted by images of air far more polluted in Beijing, but my sense of despair persists. I know that this air is the consequence of my lifestyle, my country’s demand for so many things.

I want to do things differently, to know that my actions today made the earth a bit better – cleaner, more educated, more peaceful, more collaborative both with other humans and cultures, but also with other species on land, in the air, in the oceans and fresh water around me. I will feel more at ease if I know I am doing my part to tread lightly, and ideally, leave my world better than I found it.

But what should I do to keep our earth clean and healthy? I saw Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, and I know he was criticized for publicizing that movie from the comfort of private jets and 2 exceedingly large residences. I try to pay attention to how I can live greener and educate my kids to be good stewards of the earth. I have a friend who is a green builder, and I live in a place where a lot of people are trying to do their best to minimize their environmental impact. However, I don’t know how to practically do this on a day-to-day basis or if we are doing enough, and I have the sinking feeling that most people around me don’t either.

I would like to have my marching orders, a play book, step-by-step instructions, a “how to” guide, whatever you want to call it, based on the best information we have, to take sufficient action today to ensure a healthy planet for the future.

Inspiration

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men—true nobility is being superior to your former self. (Anon)