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A simple new iPhone/iPad app. called Drip Detective lets you quickly find out how much that dripping faucet is costing you. Drip Detective is only $1.99 at the iTunes store, and it could save you hundreds of dollars.

There are two easy ways to determine the rate of your leak with this app.

1. Simply tap the screen each time a drips falls from your faucet. After four our five taps, Drip Detective determines the average drip rate. You input the cost per gallon of water from your water bill, and it calculates how much money is going down your drain.
2. If you have a fast leak, you can measure by volume.

Drip Detective supports both Metric and American volumes, and totals your water and dollar waste by day, week, month and year.

In think Drip Detective is one of the easiest, most practical apps. available for understanding the impact of what may seem like an inconsequential waste of water. It’s a water conservation tool that will help you achieve savings that will really add up.

Click to visit the site.

You can imagine the gigantic smile on my face when I come across websites like The Green Samaritan, a site inspired by the “Good Samaritan,” but with a green twist. I like it. And I love the fact that they feature our water-saving tip widget from the Water – Use It Wisely campaign prominently on their homepage.

The campaign’s easy-to-use sustainability message found in the widget fits perfectly with Green Sam’s mission of, “Being kind to your environment through refined, renewed and resourceful living.” It’s extremely gratifying when a simple project you spearhead helps others.

Click here to experience the interactive home water audit.

Feel free to add our water-saving tip widget to your site. And while you’re at WaterUseItWisely.com, check out our new interactive home water audit and share it with your peeps. That’s what it’s there for.

Thank you Green Samaritan for helping us to further ignite the growth our water conservation movement.

This post originally appeared in Park Howell’s “Sustainable Storytelling” blog. Park&Co is the sustainable marketing firm that created the Water – Use It Wisely campaign

Throughout the month of June, the Mesa Red Mountain Library, 635 N. Power Road in Mesa, Arizona, will feature a 16-foot tall, 136-gallon water jug pyramid as part of the City’s Water – Use It Wisely campaign. The display represents how much water one person consumes per day in their home.

“This impressive display illustrates the need for all of us to be more aware of how much water each of us uses on a daily basis,” Mesa Conservation Specialist Donna DiFrancesco said. “We hope this urges our customers to be responsible in their water usage to protect this valuable resource.”

Typical residential water usage in Mesa ranges from 80 to 180 gallons of water per person per day, including indoor and outdoor use. Water use is broken down in the following categories:

• Consumption – 6 gallons
• Showers and Baths – 16 gallons
• Toilets – 18 gallons
• Household Cleaning – 22 gallons
• Outdoors – 74 gallons

The campaign recently introduced the Home Water Challenge, an educational video that provides water conservation information, tips and helpful links that show how to conserve water in and around your home. Find it on our site by clicking here.

Participants can then input their monthly water use from their utility bill into a worksheet to see how their own water use stacks up to the average.

Water – Use It Wisely Regional Campaign Partners include the cities of Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, Chandler, Glendale, Tempe, Avondale, El Mirage, Fountain Hills, Peoria, Surprise, and Queen Creek. Additional partners include the Arizona American Water Company, Arizona Municipal Water Users Association, Global Water Resources, Liberty Water Company, and Salt River Project.

By Ian Satter, City of Mesa

Water-Use It Wisely was recently mentioned in a post on www.livestrong.com , a website dedicated to helping people take action to make the most of their life, time, body and world. Since saving water is essential to life on earth, it is vital that people learn the best ways to conserve this precious resource.

Click here to read the article and learn 5 simple ways to save water.  For even more ways to save in and around the home, check out the Water-Use It Wisely online home water challenge.

Do you know how much water you’re using each month? Are you doing the right things in your home to help you save water and reduce your water bill? Did you know that up to 70% of water use happens outdoors? These questions and more can be answered when you go online to take the new Water-Use It Wisely Home Water Challenge.

The Home Water Challenge is a short animated educational video that provides you water conservation information, tips, and helpful links that show you how to conserve water in and around your home.

Click on the 15 second spot below for a sneak peak.

For the full-length video, go to www.wateruseitwisely.com/arizona

· Trees clean pollutants from the air

· Trees produce oxygen

· Trees conserve energy

· Trees reduce stormwater runoff

· Trees add value to communities

· Trees provide food and shelter for wildlife

· Trees create shade and cool the environment

Arbor Day in Arizona is celebrated any time from February through April, but the National Arbor Day is designated for Friday, April 30^th. It is a very special day, set aside as a time to plan – and to plant – for a healthier future. A tiny seedling planted today will give back for a lifetime. According to the US Forest Service, over a 50-year lifetime a tree recycles $37,500 worth of water and generates $62,000 worth of pollution control. Now that’s something to celebrate! Planting a tree in your neighborhood is one of the best things you can do not only for your community, but for our planet as well. Make a difference. Plant a tree.

What does planting a tree have to do with saving water? There are many trees that not only save water, but that also perform well and are easy to maintain in the desert. Check out our listing of over 200 low-water use plants in our booklet Landscape Plants for the Arizona Desert, or find the information online here.

Courtesy of City of Scottsdale

Today marks “World Water Day,” and National Geographic is offering a free download of its extraordinary water issue. The pictures are nothing short of phenomenal.

Drink up.

Making your own compost at home provides two great benefits. It’s a great way to recycle your yard clippings and kitchen scraps, and the end result of the process provides free mulch for your plants. Our Arizona summer is just around the corner, and placing compost or other organic mulches on the surface of plant roots is one great way to get your landscape through this long, hot, dry season.

A two to four inch layer of organic mulch will help keep roots cooler, retain soil moisture, reduce weed growth, improve soil structure, and increase nutrient holding abilities of the soil. Compost or other organic mulches can reduce plant water needs by as much as 30%, and best of all, if you are composting, you are diverting waste from the landfill that would produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

When installing new plants, place compost or mulch on the surface of the root zone after planting and then top with rock or granite. Because mulch breaks down very quickly here due to the heat, it is a good idea to replenish organic mulches around existing plants once or twice each year.

Here are our favorite tips to share for successful composting in the desert:

• Check with your City/Town and see if they offer recycled trash barrels as composting containers.
• Place your composter near a water source so you can occasionally wet it down to speed up decomposition.
• Add some helpful ingredients to your compost pile like coffee grounds (check with your local coffee-house) or horse manure (check with local stables).
• Keep mulches about three to four inches from the trunk or stem, since too much moisture against the bark can cause damage.

Composters, hard at work: Cities may offer recycled trash barrels as compost containers. Photo by Pam Perry

If you’re unsure how to get started, then you can’t miss Mesa’s March Living Green Workshop titled Composting as Easy as One-Two, March 13th at 1:30 p.m. at the Dobson Branch Library, 2425 S. Dobson Road in Mesa. Or you can learn easy steps to turn green waste into mulch from the City of Mesa’s March $ustainability $avings Tip (PDF).

Carol turning compost: Turning the material to aerate aids the decomposition process. Photo by Pam Perry

Mesa is one of seventeen Water – Use It Wisely regional partners, many of whom offer water-wise workshops. Check out all of the partner programs from the Water – Use It Wisely calendar on our home page. You can also check out all of our landscape plants and Xeriscape links, including rebates available on our Water – Use It Wisely local resources page.

Compost: Turn your kitchen scraps into rich mulch. Photo by Donna DiFrancesco

Does what we say matter? Do people listen? If the hear us are they acting on it? A new study by the Water Research Foundation provided some insights into these questions and more.

The project, “Water Conservation: Customer Behavior and Effective Communications investigates the effect of communication tools and strategies on residential water use and water conservation behavior of residential customers…” Basically, that’s a fancy way of asking if the stuff organizations like Water – Use It Wisely so passionately promotes resonates with its audience.

We invite you to take a look at the entire study for a comprehensive look at the results but a peak into a few insights are certainly encouraging. Below are a few results pulled from the Phoenix portion of the study (Water – Use it Wisely’s hope base):

• “There are a number of ways to save water and they all start with you” message was seen or heard by 75% of survey respondents.
• “Water your plants deeply, but less frequently to create healthier and stronger landscapes” message was seen or heard by 69% of survey respondents.
• “Use a broom instead of a hose to clean your driveway or sidewalk and save 80 gallons of water every time” message was seen or heard by 61% of respondents.
• Customers that reported that “air pollution” is an environmental concern in the community were associated with lower water use.
• Customers that found sales associates at hardware stores “rarely credible” or “not credible” were associated with lower water use.

It’s encouraging to see that our message is being heard and we’re truly grateful to those passing that message along. It’s because of you that we’re making a difference so let’s turn it up a notch. Help us spread our message even farther in 2010.

Two recent segments from CBS news are worth highlighting. The first is the “60 Minutes” report on California’s drought and the toll it’s taking on the state and nation.

Second is a recent feature in the CBS News series “Where America Stands,” entitled, “America’s Dwindling Water Supply.” The article details some sobering facts including how the U.S.’s water use stacks up against the rest of the world. According to the article Americans average using 150 gallons of water per day with 30 gallons being used by 9 a.m. Compare that to the 40 gallons of water per day used in the U.K. and 13 gallons per day used in some of the worlds poorest countries and it seems we’ve got a lot of work to do.

The rest of the article points to how we got here and what we can do to make a difference. There’s even a link to the Water – Use It Wisely tips page as a resource for how to get started. While there is certainly an urgency to make a difference now, the good thing is there are plenty of easy ways to make a huge difference. Our job here is to help you understand that. But remember, no tip or resource works without your commitment. It doesn’t take much, just a little time and a little effort and we can turn this thing around in a hurry.