My challenge on Day Six of No Impact Week was to reduce the amount of water I use. A Peace Corps memory came to mind. In 1995, I lived in an extremely arid region of the Dominican Republic. Water was scarce, and the municipal government sometimes shut down the city water pump for as long as a week at a time. All of the townspeople were forced to be creative about how we used and stored water. Keeping that memory in mind on Day Six of my experiment, I wanted to see how far I could stretch my water conservancy.
The hippest change I made was using my housemates’ rain catchment system (also referred to as “rainwater harvesting”). The concept is the same as the catchment systems I saw in the Dominican Republic, but my housemates' system had a unique twist.
Their twist was that the system relies on two wine barrels from a local Oregon vineyard. One barrel is stationed under the gutters in the front of the house, and another is stationed in the back. The rain in the gutter is routed so that it drips right into each barrel, instead of into the city’s over-burdened drainage system.
Installing a rain catchment system is a fantastic idea for a number of reasons. It helps reduce stormwater runoff pollution that threatens salmon and other habitat. Some cities offer incentives to homeowners who install a rain catchment system. http://www.portlandonline.com/bps/index.cfm?c=ecbbd&a=bbehfa (describing Portland, Oregon's rainwater harvesting program). It also gives my housemates and me a source of water. This week I used water from the barrel to wash mud off my clothes and bike after rainy rides through town. Starting in the spring, my housemates will connect a hose to the barrel for watering the flowers and garden.
Do you want to catch the rain falling on your roof? Check out the Simple Steps website on installing roof gutters and rain barrels: http://bit.ly/3arrKR. The following website gives a good overview of a larger rain catchment system, similar to the one my neighbors used in the Dominican Republic. http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/surv/raincat.htm
The second change I made was increasing my awareness. For example, when doing laundry, I resisted the urge to wash anything less than a full load in the washing machine. (Check out Simple Steps’ greenhouse gas calculator for washing machines: http://bit.ly/25pbGa.) Smaller loads I washed by hand. When brushing my teeth, rather than relying on the tap—which I tend to let run—I kept a cup of water next to the sink to rinse. When washing my hands or in the shower, I turned off the tap and soaped up while singing the now famous hand-washing song, “Happy birthday to me.” This song, when sung intelligibly, gives you just enough time to eradicate most germs.
A host of other great tips can be found in the No Impact Experiment Manual, available online at http://noimpactproject.org/experiment/your-how-to-guide/.
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