Water IS Life

So the NLC really wants to address water in the world. Have you ever seen a sign or shirt with the approach to water conservation that goes something like this; “Conserve water, drink more beer!”

Every time we see that type of snarkiness, we cannot help but to wonder are there really people out there that think there’s such a thing as “Beer Lake” or “Coffee River”, maybe even “Cola Falls”…?!

So let’s just look at all the things we rely on water for:

1. ALL beverages have a base of water. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
2. Washing our hands, bodies, hair, dishes, clothing, bedding, transportation.
3. Watering our food (vegetables, animals) and all the plants that we have for decoration (interior/exterior). Last but not least, all the plants that are responsible for producing oxygen (what humans need to breathe) also need water (forests, kelp forests, every plant we see produces some oxygen).

Have you started to see the magnitude as to why clean water is important? Did you know that human beings can survive about 2.5 weeks without any kind of food, but we can only survive 3 days without drinking any type of liquid?

So how do we baby step approach water conservation/sustainability?

We have to be hyper aware at all times, as to how we are using it (don’t just leave the faucet running (BIG NO-NO!!).

Here’s a list of things we here at the NLC have put in place in our daily lives:

1. Yellow let it mellow, Brown flush it down. (Yes we know that really grosses some people out, but toilets flush an obscene amount of water down with every flush, so our rule of thumb is 3 pees = 1 flush. Trust us, it’s not that bad and if it is, maybe you should make sure you aren’t having kidney/liver issues!)
2. When brushing your teeth DON’T LEAVE THE WATER RUNNING!! Rule of thumb: water coming out of any faucet not being used for anything besides us being too lazy to shut it off, is just unacceptable. The faucet should only be used for short bursts of water.
3. When washing/rinsing dishes refer to rule #2. Have a grey water catch system in place (a bucket or bowl will suffice) to get all the warm up water.
4. When taking a shower, refer to rule #2. Have a grey water catch system in place (a bucket will suffice) to get all the warm up water, prior to getting into the shower.
5. When watering your outdoor plants, time it, have alarms in place so you don’t forget and use as much of the caught grey water from inside as you can throughout the week. We typically only water everything in the yard about once a week (twice during hot spells) but balance it out with little “spritzes” of grey water during the week.
6. If you can set up your laundry/kitchen sink to be grey water friendly, DO IT!
7. If you can install rain water catch/filtration systems, DO IT!

There are many ways to conserve water and we have only covered some of the basics. But if we collectively start working together to make clean water a priority, hopefully we won’t end up in a world wide war over this most precious resource. Because the war over water, will make the war over oil look like a pleasant walk in the park.

-NLC