When brushing your teeth, it’s easy to be lazy and leave the water running. After all, you’re just going to turn it back on again in a minute or so. It almost seems a waste of your energy to conserve what seems like not very much water. However, there are a number of environmental and financial incentives that should motivate you to conserve water as part of your healthy lifestyle, helping you ensure your environmental footprint isn’t larger than it needs to be so there’s enough water for everyone.
Little Things You Do Protect the Natural World You Love
Conserving finite resources like water can help you recognize how rewarding environmentally-conscious behaviors can be. According to psychologists cited in an article on what motivates people to be green in “Monitor on Psychology,” taking small steps can help anyone--even those who don’t consider themselves die-hard environmentalists--feel better about living simply while protecting the natural world and spending your money on what’s important.
Set a Good Example
If your children or spouse see you running the water, the symbolism of the action is quite powerful. Think of the situation as a chance set a good example. People are highly likely to be influenced by the behaviors of other people, especially authority figures and those they like. Take advantage of your leverage to make sure others don’t copy your bad habit when you run the water down the drain when you’re brushing.
Save Some Money
Every bit counts. Sure, it’s not very much water. But you don’t come home from work and throw your pennies in the garbage can, so you should avoid doing the equivalent with running water down the sink. According to H2ouse, a project of the California Urban Water Conservation Council, the average faucet flow rate is 1.3 gallons per minute.
Common Sense
Using the same average faucet flow rate as before, 900 gallons is the amount of water you would waste per year if you run the water while you brush your teeth for an average of one minute in the morning and at night. Perhaps the image of pouring over 900 gallons of water down your driveway will; with that amount of water, you could fill a seven-person Jacuzzi-brand hot-tub. Twice.
Respect Your Local Watershed
According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, nature dictates the absolute quantity of available water in a given watershed. This fixed, finite amount of water must be enough to meet the needs of all of the water, land and land-based activities of people, plants and animals, cities, factories related to water use. If you don’t need the water, be a good citizen and leave it available others in your watershed.Though nature regulates the absolute quantity of water available, it is we humans whose demands for water can outstrip the amount that nature can supply, leaving others we share our watersheds with, such as the frogs, fish, and birds of wetland and river ecosystems, out to dry.
