When you are purchasing appliances and devices that use water, such as shower heads and toilets, choose those that use less water, usually listed as certified WaterSense products. This means they “meet the EPA’s specifications for water efficiency and performance. According to the EPA, such products work as well or better than similar but less efficient products despite being 20% more water efficient.” To find these products, just type in “WaterSense products” in your search engine, and you will get a long list of the products and providers.
Today we are focusing on TOILETS: According to the EPA, “toilets are by far the main source of water use in teh home, accounting for nearly 30 percent of an average home’s indoor water consumption.” Older, inefficient toilets use up to 6 gallons per flush, but newer toilets certified as WaterSense use 1.28 gallons or less (even lower than the federal standard of no more than 1.6 gallons per flush), but perform as well or better than high water-use toilets. Toilets labeled WaterSense have been “independently certified to meet rigorous criteria for both performance and efficiency.” By switching to water-saving toilets, a family could reduce toilet water use by 20-60% and save more than $110 per year in water costs, and “Nationally, if all old, inefficient toilets in the United States were replaced with WaterSense labeled models, we could save 520 billion gallons of water per year.” For more information, visit epa.gov/watersense/watersense-label.
