47,811 litres of water saved!

The month of March is over, the sponge baths are done and I am back to showering! Yay! The novelty of showering has not yet worn off, I still enjoy each and every one!  Something I have kept doing is filling a bucket with water as my shower heats up – I find that it takes about 6 litres before the water runs hot – just enough to pour into the toilet tank for one flush!

It was certainly a challenging month, but a lot of fun and it really got the message of the importance of water conservation across to a lot of people. I’ve been singing the water conservation tune for years now, but I found there really is nothing like leading by example to engage people on the issue. I was thrilled at the media uptake of the challenge and feel like I reached a wide audience. And survived many an attack on my personal hygiene!

Thank you all for pledging to reduce your own water use during the month of March. I am pleased to report that collectively, your pledges added up to:

38,223 litres of water saved throughout the month of March!

This is awesome, you should all be very proud of yourselves! And this is just those in Saskatchewan who pledged water to me. I’m sure with all the pledges that other participants gathered, we saved hundreds of thousands of litres of water. As well as leaving that water in the river for ecosystems to use, the pledges have saved a great deal of environmental and financial cost of pumping and treating all that water and then the cost of treating it again at the sewage treatment plant (80 – 90% of water that comes into your home is not consumed – ie it goes down the drain and needs to be treated again before discharge to the river).

In terms of my own personal water savings – its hard to calculate as I have no idea how much water I used before I began the challenge. But going by the Canadian average of 329 litres of water per day (I’m sure I use much less in an average day but having no other figure, this is the best I can do)……..

I finished the month with 114 litres of water “banked” – ie by not using my whole 25 litre allotment. Keeping this in mind, I saved a total of 9,588 litres in March!

With 10 people participating this year, there is definitely potential to make the challenge an annual thing. I will be back in New Zealand by this time next year,  thus widening the scope of the challenge. I’ll keep the Facebook group active (search for “Shutting off the Tap”) and keep people posted early next year.

Congratulations everyone! Thank you for doing your bit to conserve water and raise awareness about this important issue. I believe that within my life time, the worlds’ major wars will be fought not over oil, but over water. In fact it’s already begun…but that’s another story.

Cheers
Alina