self sufficient life

Water, just how much do we need?

I’ve been keeping an eye on our utility usage for the last couple of months, to keep track of what we use and see where we can, maybe, save a few bucks. I found our water usage rather disturbing.

Our water usage is a little over 400 liters (or about 110 gallons) a day. Our household supports two adults and two kids. Looking at the average water usage for Germany, which is just under 200 liters a day, per person, we aren’t doing too bad. Comparing our use to the 575 liters per person, per day, for the average US citizen and just under 500 liters for Australians, I’d say we are doing pretty damn good!

Still, 400 liters is a lot of water! This is not just plain water we’re talking about, it’s grade A drinking water that pours out of our tap. And how much of it do we drink? Let’s see, most of our beverages are bottled, so the only water we drink is what we use to make coffee and tea, maybe 2 liters a day, 3 liters tops! Add to that the water used for cooking and brushing our teeth, I’d say about 10 liters a day would be plenty of drinking water for our family of four.

The other 390 liters a day are wasted on showering, washing dishes and clothing and flushing the toilet. Now I would prefer somewhat clean filtered water to wash myself, my clothing and the dishes, but it does not have to be drinking quality. And to flush the toilet, just plain water from any river or creek or untreated rainwater would do just fine.

Since we have a huge rainwater tank (12.000 liters) I’m going to look into using some of that free water. I’m sure we are not paying to water the lawn next summer, but I’m also going to look into the cost and labor involved in using the collected rainwater to flush the toilets. That should save quite a few buckets of drinking water.

If you are interested in average per person water usage in different countries, have a look here