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Did you know that an American home can waste, on average, more than 10,000 gallons of water every year due to running toilets, dripping faucets, and other household leaks?

Fix a Leak Week will be celebrated across the nation March 12-18, but you can join the chase at our kickoff event here in Arizona by registering for “One for Water” 4-Miler on Saturday March 10.

This fun local race was created to raise awareness for fixing leaks and encouraging water efficiency in our homes, landscapes and businesses. Leaky “Loo” McFlapper, the event’s life-sized running toilet mascot, is a 6′ tall reminder that running toilets are only funny when they are mascots. Race organizers, sponsors and volunteers do take fixing leaks seriously and hope that you will join them at this truly one-of-a-kind event.

The “One for Water” 4-Miler takes off at the City of Peoria’s Rio Vista Community Park on March 10^th at 8 a.m. Registration opens at 7 a.m. The park is located at 8866 West Thunderbird Road, Peoria, AZ. We will have great prizes for the race medalists, thanks to our generous sponsors. Also available are prize drawings for people who pledge to find and fix leaks, so you don’t even have to be a runner to have the chance to win.

Last year, the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association (AMWUA) was selected as the national spotlight for the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense Fix a Leak Week for the race and other activities.

AMWUA is one of fifteen Water – Use It Wisely regional partners that offer water-wise programs and opportunities. Check out all of the partner programs at the Water – Use It Wisely calendar on our home page.

Siemens and Facebook have come together to help you define your personal water footprint. The water calculator allows you to input personal information about your household water use and gives you a score. It’s easy to use and keeps you thinking about all of the ways you can save water.

I Even got a “Nice job,” attaboy from the calculator for our water footprint. It says we use around 57,917 gallons per year. That still seems like a lot, so I guess I’ve got more work to do.

How do you compare? Take the challenge now. It only takes a minute or so, and you’ll be surprised at what you learn.

Here are a 100+ ways to save.

When in doubt, ask. Here’s an interesting question and answer that I think all homeowners can take advantage of.

The Average Arizonan uses 136 gallons of water per day

Q: I have a concern about high water usage.  We have lots of mature landscaping, but artificial turf (no grass), a fairly large pool, hot tub, 3 full baths; a 1/2 bath.  There are 3 people in our home; I am home a lot during the day.  Is 24,000 gallons of usage for the month of August something to be concerned about?  It seems like an awful lot.  What can we do??

A: Thank you for your interest in saving water and concerns for your household water use.

Let’s look at your daily per person usage. If you used 24,000 gallons, we’ll divide by 3 people = 8,000 gallons per person per month. Let’s divide 8,000 by 31= 258 gallons per person per day. Yep, that’s a lot!

Of course August is a very hot month and I suspect that a lot of the water is being used in the landscape or swimming pool (glad to hear you don’t have grass though).

You can easily be losing 3,400 gallons in your pool alone during August due to evaporation and about 17,000 gallons would be typical water needs in August for a very large landscape of about 10,000 square feet. Add the two together and you already have over 20,000 gallons, so your outdoor use might be why your bill was so high. However, I’m just guessing on your landscape size and I’m not sure if you live in Arizona or another climate. There are always other things to check.

• Look around for leaks
• Listen for running backwash water around water treatment appliances
• Check to see if your irrigation timer has been set properly
• Check to make sure you are watering properly with our Landscape Watering Guide
• Check your toilet for leaks, trickling sounds or water moving in the bowl
• Check your pool for leaks, especially if you have an automatic pool refiller
• Browse through our 100-tips at Water – Use It Wisely
• Take our Home Water Challenge, then visit the links at the end to see how you can reduce your water use

Another helpful brochure is our High Water Use Action Plan. It can help you figure out where all that water might be going.

Good luck and I hope you’re well on your way to reducing your water use at your home.

Donna DiFrancesco is a Conservation Specialist with the City of Mesa, Environmental & Sustainability Division where she educates Mesa, Arizona residents about xeriscape, water conservation, living green and sustainability. She is also a member of the Water – Use It Wisely regional campaign steering committee.

Water conservation can serve as an integral part of corporate sustainability practices, or the “greening” of a business.

Many often think of “greening” as a technique that focuses on energy savings, but it is important to not forget the importance of saving “blue.” Not only is water a limited natural resource, but there is also a fundamental water-energy connection.

The treatment and delivery of water requires a great deal of energy, but it takes a lot of cooling water for energy production too. The electrical power industry is one of the greatest consumers of water, using more than 200,000 million gallons of water per day, according to the most recent U.S. Geological Survey for water.

Saving Water is Good for Business

Environmental issues are becoming increasingly important to businesses, as customers are becoming more environmentally savvy. In fact, as reported in the UN Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study: A New Era of Sustainability, in 2008, 91 percent of consumers said they had bought a product or service from a company they trusted—showing a direct correlation between profits and public image.

Being an active water steward is one more way to enhance a company’s image and improve employee pride and motivation. Besides positive PR, an organization will benefit with cost savings, including lower maintenance and equipment replacement costs, in addition to reductions in energy and water bills.

Ways Businesses Use Water

The ways a business may use water are as varied as the types of businesses that use it. Is the organization a simple office setting or a manufacturer? A food processor, school, hospital or motel? All have different ways of using water, from simple bathroom and kitchen use to cooling towers, landscape irrigation, water purification, scrubbers or rinsing processes. Water use may range from a few thousand gallons a month to millions of gallons.

Ways Businesses Can Save Water

Simple steps can be taken like fixing leaks, installing low-flow showerheads, installing high efficiency toilets, xeriscape landscaping and recycling process water. However, the best savings will occur if a business creates a water management plan.

Three best practices for all organizations:

1. Have a goal to save water
2. Identify and implement water efficiency measures
3. Monitor savings and progress

Donna DiFrancesco is a Conservation Specialist with the City of Mesa, Environmental & Sustainability Division where she educates Mesa, Arizona residents about xeriscape, water conservation, living green and sustainability. She is also a member of the Water – Use It Wisely regional campaign steering committee.

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.

Rock yards and cactus are not the only solution to a water-wise landscape. Managing the amount of water used is also a factor. Most of Arizona receives very little rain each year; therefore people rely on municipal water for landscape plants and gardens. Selecting low water-use plants is important but managing what little rain falls can make a difference, too.

Rainwater harvesting is the process of catching and storing rain or creating a path for the water to find its way to trees, plants, or gardens. Watch how water flows on a property during a rain storm. Direct it in to storage barrels or cisterns with gutters and use it later. Slow the flow on hills or slopes by creating a slight ditch (or row) on contour to prevent soil erosion as well as allow the water time to settle into the soil.

When it rains automatic irrigation systems can be turned off, even if it is just for a day or two! Rain stored in barrels can be used as needed over a period of weeks or months depending on the quantity stored. Properly managed and stored rainwater in the desert can make a difference in an arid environment.

Check out the Landscape Water Guide and “Watering By the Numbers” to help you determine the irrigation needs of your landscape.

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

Our guest author this week is Doreen Pollack. She is a Master Gardener, a Permaculture Designer and the owner of Down 2 Earth Gardens. Doreen provides advice to homeowners on how to reduce the use and dependency of outside resources in their landscape. She specializes in working closely with do-it-yourself gardeners and people just starting to use their yard for food production and respite from their busy lives.

Water not only sustains life. It quenches a lifestyle thirst. And when its use is abused, it can vanish. And with it, the life around it evaporates.

This withering of water and life is captured in the stark yet beautiful photos of Gigi Cifali’s series, “Absence of Water.”

You can feel the former living, breathing character of these now derelict lidos and baths in the United Kingdom through the architecture, which feels as though it’s frozen in time. The decided absence of one element – water – is what has lead to their ruin.

Through her photo essay, Cifali hopes to “express the importance of water” as an “element of regeneration for the human spirit.”

The Griswold family in National Lampoon’s, “Vacation,” maybe the ultimate American icon for that favorite of summer pastimes: Road trips!

But now the EPA  is whistling down the on-ramp and they’ve got the pedal to metal. They’ve replaced Clark Griswold behind the wheel of the Wagon Queen Family Truckster with Flo and a hybrid. Flo is the “spokesgallon” for WaterSense’s new “We’re for Water” campaign. And instead of Wally World, their destination are water-stressed communities across the country.

Why the grand road trip?

Flo will stop at national landmarks and tourist attractions from Los Angeles to New York City, spreading the word about water efficiency along the way—from July 14 until August 2.

The EPA reports that 36 states have projected some degree of water shortages through 2013. With the U.S. population doubling between 1950 and 2005, and water use tripling, the EPA decided to send Flo on a drive-about to educate all of us on the little water-saving tips that can make a big difference. Plus, they’re pushing WaterSense labeled products on their trip.

Go to their site and you can take an “I’m for Water” pledge. You can even friend them on Facebook.

It’s great to see the EPA hit the road with this kind of messaging. The Water – Use It Wisely campaign has been at it for almost 14 years with our now famous, “100+ Ways to Save Water.”

I hope Flo makes it to Phoenix, because our own Wayne Drop could use some company (Although I’m not sure Flo can hold a candle to Christy Brinkley in her Ferrari).

How We Landed Water – Use It Wisely in the Wall Street Journal

The WSJ was looking for a story about small business and sustainability. Park Howell and his agency Park&Co, the creators of the Water – Use It Wisely campaign, were asked to share their story about its use of a cool new internal sustainability platform called GreenNurture.com.

The writer also requested a photo for the story. Never one to miss a promotional opportunity, Park stood himself in front of the posters for the Water – Use It Wisely campaign.

The agency is one of the first to adopt this new website/enterprise platform that helps companies large and small become more sustainable through micro-eco actions created out of upping the conversation about being “Green” within the company. The WSJ wanted the story

The team at Park&Co have been using GreenNurture.com to share ideas on the little things we can do to reduce, reuse, and save around the office.

From our production manager: “I know I may look like a vampire but I don’t think the extra lamps are necessary all the time-especially in the morning.”

From our ACD: “Keep the thermostat a couple degrees higher in summer so people aren’t wearing sweaters at work on a 100+ degree day.”

From our bookkeeper: “We should take the recycling of the job jackets one step further to have our ultimate goal be “to be paperless.” We could store all necessary documentation on the server under a file of the job so that both the accounting and job folders could be viewed. Ultimately we could remove those file cabinets and replace them with a green hammock to catch up on “Z’s” for all the extra time we’ll have created.“

From me: “What if we issued just one ream of paper per person per year for basic documents? And then if and when you needed a second ream, you would have to petition for one describing the merits of your need? Would this makes us all think twice about running something through our printers?”

If you haven’t yet checked out GreenNurture.com and what it can mean to your company, utility or municipality relative to reducing waste, recycling, and saving water and money, it’s definitely worth about 20 minutes of your time. That’s all it takes to get your internal eco campaign up and running.

In the meantime, do you want to step up to the “One Ream Per Person Per Year” challenge? It truly monetizes a product that everyone views as a commodity. Think of the money + trees + paper + printer ink + printer power + the cost of recycling + the carbon footprint, you and your company will save just by reframing a ream of paper as something worth vastly more. Scarcity has a way of increasing the value of all items. Basic economics.

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