If your to-do list is anything like ours (i.e., already miles long), you probably don’t have time to replace your entire lawn with low-water plant options. But there are some super-easy tweaks you can make to do your part in solving this national problem. The sooner you take note of what you might be guilty of (we all are, don’t panic), the sooner you can alter your habits and start reducing your water footprint. If you take a five-minute shower using this type of showerhead, you would save enough water in a year to fill a 15-foot aboveground pool. Plus, you save on the water bill and on all the energy that would have gone into heating the excess shower water. Everyone wins. Can’t install a low-flow head right now? Instead, work on trimming down your shower times. Look for sink faucets, aerators, and other accessories with a WaterSense label, which means they’re EPA-certified to use a maximum of 1.5 gallons per minute. This can reduce a sink’s water flow by 30 percent or more from the standard flow of 2.2 gallons per minute. According to the EPA, “replacing old, inefficient faucets and aerators with WaterSense labeled models [or twisting on a WaterSense labeled aerator] can save the average family 700 gallons of water per year, equal to the amount of water needed to take 45 showers.”
