As you replace your exist­ing house­hold equip­ment, choose the water-efficient mod­els avail­able and you will save on your water usage. You might even decide that it is worth upgrad­ing an item such as a wash­ing machine for greater water effi­ciency. How­ever, there are many prac­ti­cal things that you can do at low cost or no cost at all that will save lots of water.

1. Install a low-flow show­er­head and tap aerators

Reduc­ing from a show­er­head with a flow-rate of 9 litres per minute to, say, a 6 litres per minute low-flow show­er­head saves 24 litres of water dur­ing an 8-minute shower. Tap aer­a­tors add air into your water flow, pro­duc­ing a bub­bly stream of water that reduces the flow rate but main­tains the effec­tive­ness of a stronger flow.

2. Have a shorter shower

Some­times water sav­ing is this sim­ple. If you nor­mally spend 8 min­utes in the shower, have a 6 minute shower instead. This is an auto­matic 25% water sav­ing, and will save you 14–18 litres of water per shower. (Over 60% of Irish peo­ple spend 10 min­utes or more in the shower.) A five-minute shower is eas­ily pos­si­ble. In areas Aus­tralia with water short­ages, 3–4 minute show­ers are the norm. One Aus­tralian con­ser­va­tion group has even come up with a method for hav­ing a one-minute shower!

3. Place a plas­tic bot­tle filled with water/pebbles in toi­let cistern

Care­fully plac­ing a one litre bot­tle of peb­bles or water into your toi­let cis­tern will save you 1 litre per flush. Depend­ing on the size of the cis­tern and the plac­ing of its flush mech­a­nism, you may be able to add more or larger dis­place­ments, sav­ing even more water. Also, don’t use your toi­let as a waste dis­posal mech­a­nism – throw those used tis­sues in the bin, don’t flush them away.

4. Don’t let water run­ning while wash­ing hands, brush­ing teeth

Allow­ing the tap to run for 2 min­utes while you brush your teeth or wash your hands uses about 12 litres of water. When wash­ing your hands put the plug in the sink and add only the water you need. When brush­ing your teeth, use a glass of water for rinsing.

5. Fix drip­ping taps

A drip­ping tap can waste a huge quan­tity of water. Lim­er­ick County Coun­cil esti­mate that a drip­ping tap can waste up to 90 litres per day. Even a loss of 20 litres a day (about one drip per sec­ond) would add up to over 7,500 litres of water in a year.

6. Full clothes washes

Even an effi­cient, mod­ern wash­ing machine will use 45 litres of water in a sin­gle wash. One full-load instead of two half-filled washes will mean 45 litres used instead of 90 litres.

7. Full dish­washer loads

A newer model dish­washer will use about 20 litres of water. An older model might use almost dou­ble that. Turn on your dish­washer only when it is full and you will save lots of water.

8. Use plugged sink or bowl when rins­ing dishes or wash­ing vegetables

Allow­ing taps to run while rins­ing dishes or wash­ing veg­eta­bles uses about 6 litres of water per minute. Using a bowl or plugged sink will use a small frac­tion of that. A bowl of water used to rinse veg­eta­bles can be re-used to water plants.

9. Water­less car washing

Amaz­ingly, wash­ing your car at home with a hosepipe can use any­thing from 300 to 450 litres of water! Wash­ing with a bucket and sponge uses about 30 litres (4 buck­ets). Water­less car prod­ucts can reduce the amount of water used prac­ti­cally to zero.

10. Col­lect rain­wa­ter in a water butt

Water­ing your gar­den or wash­ing down your vehi­cles, dri­ve­way, foot­paths or patio area uses a lot of water, espe­cially if you use a hose. Why not install a water butt to col­lect rain­wa­ter from your drain­pipes for these pur­poses. Any­thing from 100 litres capac­ity to 750 litre capac­ity and beyond is pos­si­ble, accord­ing to your needs, space and budget.