Low Impact

Between the shower and the toilet, the bathroom is one of the big users of water in your average house. We’ve discussed water-saving shower heads in the past, but there are also solutions for the toilet too. The difference it can make to your water usage is significant - up to 35,000 litres a year!

Old style toilets only offer a single flush option, typically around 11 litres. But modern, “low flush” toilets are typically dual flush - you can do a half-flush which uses 3 litres, or a full flush which can use as little as 4.5 litres. So in the worst case, you’re still using less than half the water of an older toilet!

The… Continue reading

Well the dollar cost is pretty straightforward, but it turns out there’s a few environmental costs too…and given that the world consumes 150 billion litres of bottled water each year, those costs add up!

So what are the costs? The most obvious one is packaging - 150 billion litres of water is a lot of plastic bottles. Only a small proportion of those bottles get recycled, and recycling has its own costs too - far better not to make the bottle in the first place!

Another one that people can forget is the transportation cost. Even in the best scenario, your humble bottle of plastic water is likely to have been… Continue reading

One of the quicker and cheaper ways to make a difference to your water consumption is by purchasing a water-efficient shower head. These are shower heads that reduce the amount of water coming out of your shower per minute, either by reducing the “hole” that the water flows through or by putting air-bubbles within the water droplets.

At the end of the day, your average water-efficient shower head will be putting out around 9 litres of water every minute. An old style shower head will be around 20 litres of water a minute.

So, lets see what that means. Lets say you’re already pretty good with your water usage - you’ve given up on the 15 minute shower, and now just spend 5 minutes in the shower. With… Continue reading