We often talk about ways to save water and reduce your daily consumption, but unless you know how much water you should be using it can be difficult to know just how much you need to reduce. You may live a lifestyle where you use less than 100 litres of water a day, but you may be using almost double that. But we think a healthy goal is 100 litres and nations around the world agree. Where water scarcity is an issue in countries such as Australia and South Africa, citizens were first targeted with using 100 litres of water a day in order to resolve the issue. So, let’s figure it out together. The best way to use 100 litres of water each day.
The daily routine
There are some things we just must do each day – the essentials which we cannot avoid. We’re going to call this the daily routine. This way you know how much water you have to play around with each day. It means you can anticipate how much water use is essential each day.
Let’s group together the morning routine of water. Brushing your teeth and turning the taps off while brushing should mean you use the tap for roughly 20 seconds, equalling a maximum of 2 litres.
You may not always go to the loo when you first wake up, but there will be a point in your morning when nature calls. The flush of the toilet is 6 litres. In fact, on average a person will use the toilet 5 times each day. Let’s call this part of the daily routine 30 litres and be done with it.
Now, your shower. You may shower in the morning or at night. Sometimes, especially for the ladies, you may spend longer in the shower washing your hair some days and not others. But if this is your daily shower, jump in, scrub, and get out. Just 4 minutes in a power shower will use 60 litres. Add that to your toilet use and brushing your teeth… suddenly you have just 8 litres left of the day. And our healthy readers will be using 3 of them to drink.
Transforming the daily target to a weekly one
5 litres a day doesn’t seem like enough to do… well anything. Not even an extra toilet flush. Which is why we look at it over the course of a week. 35 litres sound far more manageable. It gives you a couple of runs on the dishwasher and allows you to boil plenty of veggies for dinner every other night. But the average load of laundry uses 50 litres.
So how can you find that additional 15 litres in one week in order to hit your 700-litre weekly limit? Well, for starters, not everyone will go to the loo 5 times a day. We’re not saying you need to keep track but if you only go 4 times 3 times a week, that already gives you the extra 15 litres you need. Perhaps, you are super speedy in the shower one morning and you only spend three minutes in there. That saves you 15 litres instantly.
How to manage 100 litres per day in your household
If you’re living alone, it’s a big balancing act trying to get enough litres for yourself to do a laundry wash each week. Although living alone you possibly don’t need the help of a dishwasher so there are positives on both sides.
If you live in a home of two or more people, you all get 100 litres each. Especially if you have kids, this can make things much easier. As they will not be using the dishwasher, washing machine or cooking. All of their extra litres go straight into your water bank ready for household chores.
The tricky part? Telling them to get out of the shower, especially if they’re teens. For younger children, a bath would be ideal. The average adult uses 80 litres in a bath whereas children use just 40. This means you can save a little bit of water by having a half-full tub.
A family of four, all using the 92 litres of daily essentials, still have 224 litres in the week to use on household things. That’s at least 4 loads of washing and two loads in the dishwasher. The only thing you’re missing at that point is water for cooking with… easily grabbed from one day a week someone flushing only 4 times instead of 5.
When you break down how 100 litres can be used in any home across the week. It requires a little bit of organisation, perhaps some thinking ahead of time, but it is achievable. Simply being aware of the information presented here today can go a long way. It isn’t as difficult as you may think. Start challenging yourself today, to figure out whether you’re closer to 100 litres than 200 and go from there. We reckon your first reduction can come from how long you spend in the shower.
