Tag: water conservation

Five Apps for the Tech-Savvy Environmentalist

Posted on by robbie

So you want to fix the environment? That’s a big job. Absent clear policy change from the powers-that-be, the onus is on all citizens to do their part and pitch in as much as they can. How much time and energy each one of us can devote to the cause varies, of course. Which is why we’ve rounded up five eco-friendly apps that will help put anyone, no matter their individual circumstances, on the path to sustainability.

SKEPTICAL SCIENCE

Here’s an alarming statistic: In a 2018 study, Yale researchers found that more than a quarter of Americans believe that global warming is naturally occurring (and, worse, 14 percent think that it’s not happening at all). If you happen to strike up a conversation with such a denier, the Skeptical Science app is your secret weapon. Run by a team of volunteers who have a wealth of combined expertise in climate science and environmental issues, the organization’s app lists common climate-denier arguments — such as “lack of consensus on who is causing climate change,” and “animals and plants can adapt” — next to true statements and then links those statements to science-based, peer-reviewed research that support them. Not only will you be able to fact-check the discussion in real-time, you’ll be armed with a wealth of knowledge and statistics that will either keep your heated banter going — or provide some big-picture food for thought that just might turn each skeptic you encounter into a climate-change believer.

DROPCOUNTR

Unless you live in a place where water conservation is mandatory — as was the case in California, for example — chances are you don’t give much thought to every drop you use throughout the day. That’s a mistake, even if droughts aren’t an issue where you are: A decrease in our water supply can lead to increased pollution from over-irrigation, and the destruction of pollution-filtering wetlands. What’s more, monitoring the amount of water you consume in your home can cut your monthly water usage by up to 9 percent, which can translate to serious utility savings and rebates. That’s where Dropcountr comes in: The free app partners with utility companies to track and analyze your home’s monthly water output, alerting you of leaks and usage by the gallon. The easy-to-understand graphs and charts also compare your household with others in the area, alongside data of what’s considered “efficient use” — hey, if a little guilt-tripping gets you to turn off the water when you brush your teeth, we’re game! While it’s only available in a handful of states — search by zip code to see if the app is available where you live — you can email your utility company to request it.

Environment Apps 1
Seafood Watch helps diners find fish that were caught in environmentally sustainable ways.

SEAFOOD WATCH

If you’re eager to add more fish to your diet but are concerned about the environmental impact of doing so, Seafood Watch is here to help. Developed by scientists at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium, the app is a pocket guide to finding fish caught or raised in an environmentally sound way that protects the long-term health of the species — info that’s not always easy to come by when buying seafood (or dining at your favorite sushi restaurant). Search for sustainable fisheries near you by inputting your zip code, or look up specific types of fish by name. The latter produces a shockingly comprehensive list of fish by type, ocean location and catching method, along with colored fish icons that indicate your best option. Overwhelmed by the amount of choices? Research your favorites before going out, and you’ll have no need to worry about putting your waiter or fishmonger on the spot.

GOOD GUIDE

If you’re confused about whether there’s anything toxic in the products you use on your body or in your home, you aren’t alone. A quick trip to the FDA’s website underscores the problem: “Under U.S. law, FDA does not have the authority to require cosmetic manufacturers to submit their safety data to FDA,” it reads. “The burden is on FDA to prove that a particular product or ingredient is harmful when used as intended.” That leaves a loophole the size of the Kardashian empire for cosmetic and household-product manufacturers to walk through — and walk through it they do.
Needless to say, much of this has a direct impact on the physical environment. Common cleaning products like this one contain chemicals that persist in the environment and are toxic to many forms of life; microbeads from a vast array of products end up in our oceans, absorbing toxins as they enter our food chain.
Enter Good Guide and its product-rating system. The Good Guide team assesses personal care, cosmetic and household products — more than 75,000 to date and counting — and gives each product a score from zero to 10. Scores hinge on what a product contains and the degree of transparency from the company regarding those ingredients (for example, “fragrance” is about as specific as “natural” when it comes to describing what exactly is in that bar of soap you just bought).
The app is easy to use, and you may be surprised by what you discover. Procter & Gamble’s Magic Eraser, for instance, scores a 10 (the least toxic rating) while Little Twig Organic Baby Powder gets a big fat zero (meaning, run for the hills!). Speaking of babies, there’s a special “Baby & Kids” section, so that you can keep your kiddos clean — and safe.

OROECO

There’s been much hand-wringing over our carbon footprint here in the U.S., and there’s good reason for it. We are the biggest carbon polluter in history, ahead of the EU and even China, and our per capita fossil-fuel consumption still dwarfs every other country by comparison.
If you’re looking for a way to reduce, or just track, the size of your climate footprint, Oroeco is a bit like the MyFitnessPal of the eco-app space. Oroeco allows you to see how so many disparate aspects of your life contribute to the warming of our planet — even things you might not necessarily think much about, like the clothing you choose and the entertainment you consume. The app then turns that data into a game of sorts. Users can track performance, set goals and compete with friends to see who can hit the lowest carbon “score.”
In order to benefit from its full range of services, Oreoco requires a bit of a lift upfront — you need to input a variety of info, including your salary range; the average number of miles you fly per year; how much you eat; and the amount you spend on goods and services. But the results should present you with a pretty good idea of how you measure up to your peers and where you can shave off a few points to win the game. In the process, you’ll become a more responsible global citizen — and that’s a win for everyone.

California Is Going to Use Toilet Water to Grow Your Vegetables

Posted on by robbie

By the end of 2017, toilet water and other wastewater will be used to irrigate a large swath of Central Valley farmland near Interstate 5, an area that is known as California’s agricultural hub because it produces more than 360 products.
“As long as we keep taking showers and flushing toilets, we can guarantee you water,” Modesto Mayor Garrad Marsh said to farmers at an August 2015 news event.
Treatment facilities in the two inland cities, Modesto and Turlock, will collect the water from sinks, showers, washing machines and toilets, and process it into what’s commonly referred to as “gray water.” Once the not-quite-drinkable H2O is clear of all solid waste, it’s completely safe to be used to water plants or siphoned off to natural wetlands.
By 2018, a $100 million pipeline is expected to transport the processed water to 30,600 acres of farmland roughly 40 miles south.
Two years ago, drought cost California’s state economy an estimated $2.7 billion, according to a study done by UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. Water shortages resulted in $247 million in lost crop revenue in 2016.
The gray water should help drought-stricken farmers in the future, as new population growth in this region of California puts increasing pressure on the water supply and scientists predict that climate change could cause future droughts to be more drastic.
“Without something like this, the future for my son and grandson and family — we’re into this third generation — I don’t know if we can keep our business going,” Jim Jasper, owner of Stewart & Jasper Orchards, tells KQED.
California has been recycling water for more than 100 years. Los Angeles County first used treated wastewater in 1929 to water golf courses and parks, and the state has been irrigating farmland with it for more than three decades, according to the Pacific Institute. A 2009 survey (the most recent available) reported that 669,000 acres of California land was irrigated using gray water.
MORE: The Counterintuitive Solution to California’s Drought Crisis
Homepage photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

This Simple Change to Your Shower Can Save Water and Money

Posted on by robbie

When it comes to saving water, even the smallest changes can make a big difference. It’s even better when one easy action can save you some elbow grease and your hard-earned dollars at the same time.
A recent post from Sustainable Nations makes this point in its title: “Save Money By NOT Cleaning Your Old Shower Head.”
How is that possible? As the post notes, older shower heads release up to 3.5 GPM (Gallons Per Minute), but many new low-flow models come in the 1 to 1.5 GPM range, yet have a negligible difference in water pressure (because no one wants a wimpy shower). Basically, instead of spending $10 for chemically-laden cleaning products such as CLR to remove the grit and grime from your current shower head, you can spend the same amount of money (or even less) and replace it with a new low-flow shower head. This change not only slashes your water bill but also saves precious H2O, too.
DON’T MISS: If Your Community is Parched, Here’s How You Can Help Conserve Water
If you’re interested in making the switch, New York Times writer Stephen Treffinger reviewed 17 different low-flow shower heads of varying models that deliver an “acceptably robust shower” (prices range from $10 to $194).
Treffinger notes that the swap can make a massive difference in your water footprint: “If you typically take a 10-minute shower every day, a reduction of a half gallon per minute will save over 1,800 gallons of water a year.”
Sounds like a planet-friendly solution that’s green and (literally) clean.
(H/T: Reddit)

5 Ways Californians Have Changed Their Behavior Because of Drought

Posted on by robbie

With California experiencing its third year of a devastating drought, the state has come up with several ways to conserve this precious resource, from mild (conservation programs, rebates for high-efficiency appliances) to drastic (mandatory rationing in some areas). Encouragingly, individual residents are also taking part in this statewide effort.
The Golden State is now seeing improvement in water conservation: urban residents as a whole have lessened water usage by about 10 percent last month (short, however, of Gov. Jerry Brown’s request of 20 percent savings in January). In August, Californians used 27 billion fewer gallons of water compared to the same time last year  — an amount that would fill 41,000 Olympic swimming pools, the San Jose Mercury News notes.
Here are some of the ways that residents are conserving H2O:
1. Waving bye-bye to lawns
With its constant watering, weeding and fertilizing, lawns are no-good for the parched state (citizens can be fined up to $500 for using the scarce resource to shower grass or wash driveways). That’s why Los Angeles residents like Rosemary Plano ripped up her yard for a “low-maintenance desertscape of succulents, heather, and gravel” that’s maintained by drip irrigation, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Many Californian cities, Los Angeles included, pay residents money for tearing up their blades with “Cash for Grass” programs.
2. Not washing cars
California State University, Los Angeles student Heidi Cuett started a small movement in her classroom school after showing up with a dirt-encrusted Prius with a bumper sticker reading “Go Dirty for the Drought,” the Christian Science Monitor reports, inspiring 20 to 30 percent of her classmates to take part in the 60-day #DirtyCarPledge. The campaign, started by LA Waterkeeper, says that if 10,000 Southern Californians who normally wash their cars every two weeks took the two-month pledge to forgo car washes, they’d save about 3 million gallons of water.
3. From tub to landscape
With record-low rainfall, residents are using greywater to support flushing and watering plants. Brooktrails resident Stephanie Willcutt waters her indoor plants with the cold bath water she captures before it turns hot, USA TODAY writes. (In fact, the publication reports that the whole Willcutt family has made conservation efforts such as cutting shower time, and wearing pants a few times before washing, etc, dropping from using 220 gallons daily to just 66 to 96 gallons a day).
4. Drought watch
Yes, it might sound a little Big Brother, but residents can now report on their neighbors for incidents of water waste. There are apps that let residents upload and send photos of their neighbor’s overflown lawn, for example. And in San Jose, the East Bay Municipal Utility District has a website that allows users to report water violators.
5. Changing diets 
The water we use isn’t always in plain sight — it takes about 1.1 gallons of water to produce a single almond, for example. Meat production is much worse: the average meat-eating American uses up to 1,000 gallons of water per day. U.S. Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-San Fernando Valley) wrote in an editorial that he and his staff are now taking part in Meatless Mondays to reduce their water footprint. “While we all must reduce our water usage at home to help the state survive the drought, we can also make small, but important lifestyle changes that will help,” he wrote. “I am talking about making a conscious decision to compare the large amount of water it takes to produce that steak or pork chop you’re eating, with the likely smaller amount of water needed to produce delicious meatless options.”
DON’T MISS: What’s Your Water Footprint? Find Out Here

How This Fix Can Help Quench California’s Thirst

Posted on by robbie

Seven billion gallons. From dripping faucets to burst water mains, that’s the amount of potable water that’s wasted every single day from our country’s leaky pipes.
As the Huffington Post reports, that startling amount could meet all of the daily water needs of California — a state that’s now experiencing the most severe drought ever recorded.
Simply put, the nation’s water pipes are way too old. As ABC News puts it, “Much of the piping that carries drinking water in the country dates to the first half of the 20th century, with some installed before Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House.”
Aging pipes are precisely the reason why a 100-year-old water main recently burst in Los Angeles, spewing out 20 million gallons of precious water in the already drought-stricken Californian city.
MORE: What Can We Learn From the Horrific Harlem Blast?
So what’s stopping Uncle Sam from calling the plumber? Cost, of course, is one main reason. According to Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. will need to spend up to $200 billion dollars on water systems over the next 20 years to upgrade transmission and distribution systems, $97 billion of which will need to go towards water loss control.
The New York Times also points out a much more sinister reason why the country isn’t giving its aging water infrastructure a facelift. Mary Ann Dickinson, president of the Alliance for Water Efficiency, tells the paper, “Water loss is unsexy,” adding, “There’s no ribbon cutting for new plants. If you announce that you’ve recovered a million gallons a day, it looks like you weren’t managing your system right in the first place.”
ALSO: Can This Ancient Farming Method Help Drought-Ridden California?
But this necessary (albeit expensive) fix could also mitigate much bigger problems. As the American Society of Civil Engineers says, if we do nothing about it, we’ll only have more water shortages to come, increased rates as water gets more expensive and even increased exposure to water-borne illnesses due to unreliable delivery and wastewater treatment services.
Our water systems are only getting older and the planet is only getting hotter, which means more droughts all around — and not just in the American southwest. Solutions are more crucial than ever to conserve this important resource.
Meanwhile, it may be a good idea for you to call your local plumber if you haven’t gotten around to patching up that leaky faucet.
DON’T MISS: The Silver Lining to California’s Terrible Drought 

The Eco-Friendly Plan to Quench Central California’s Thirst

Posted on by robbie

There are billions of gallons of water in California’s parched Central Valley. But the problem is this water is filled with salt, toxins and heavy metals, making it useless for irrigation. As we’ve mentioned before, traditional water desalination plants can be costly and use up a lot of energy. However, San Francisco-based start-up WaterFX has come up with a solution that uses heat to turn salty water into freshwater, and is sure to help the region’s water-pinched farmers.
WaterFX’s Aqua4 project, currently in phase one, is humming along in California’s agricultural hub that’s especially feeling this year’s awful drought. As Clean Technica reports, though small at 160 x 40 feet, this solar-powered plant is capable of turning otherwise unusable water into 65,000 gallons of freshwater a day. And here’s more good news — it also converts all that leftover brine and other minerals from the saltwater for reuse (such as calcium compounds for drywall or nitrates for fertilizer). You can watch the video above to see how it works.
MORE: How Catfish Can Help Solve California’s Water Woes
This water desalination plant could solve multiple problems. First, because it runs on solar power, the energy is cheap and clean. Second, local farms no longer have to pipe in water from other locations. Thanks to this project’s success, there are plans in the works to expand the facility later this year to quench more of California’s thirsty cities.

This Ambitious Project Could Change What We Know About Oceans

Posted on by robbie

The Los Angeles city council recently approved an ambitious project to build an extensive ocean research center on an unused pier in San Pedro, an economically depressed area. The project, known as AltaSea, will be a collaboration between public and private entities, including the Port of Los Angeles and several universities. It will span 35 acres of water and land, and include facilities for studying tsunami waves and other phenomena, classrooms, exhibits, labs and offices. The Southern California Marine Institute, which combines the marine studies programs of twelve universities, will be one of the first organizations to take up residence at AltaSea. The project will take 15 to 20 years to complete and cost $500 million, a good chunk of which has already been pledged by the Annenberg Foundation and private donations. The project is expected to generate nearly 8000 jobs for the community, and the gains it will make in our understanding of the ocean are incalculable.

Switching from Milk to Beer Could Help Save the Planet

Posted on by robbie

Surprising but true: If you swapped your daily glass of milk for a beer, you’d save more than 15,000 gallons of water in a single year. Check out this infographic explaining how much water is needed to produce commonly used items, and learn some actionable steps you can take to save water by switching from one product to the other. Just don’t try to put beer in your cereal.
Source: Pinterest

To Restore Water to the Colorado River, All These Teens Had to Do Was Send a Text

Posted on by robbie

Change the Course is working to restore water to the Colorado River, which flows through seven thirsty states. Part of the nonprofit’s mission is to get young people involved with the cause, so they set up partnerships with donors who give money for every text they receive. As seen in this video, Christian McGuinn recently motivated young people attending We Day in Minnesota to text RIVER to 77177 and make a pledge to add their voices in support of water conservation. Partner organizations agreed to donate enough money to restore 1,000 gallons to the Colorado River Basin for each text received. At We Day in Seattle in March, teenagers’ texts restored 7 million gallons to the river. With the money from the pledges, Change the Course funds new irrigation methods, upgrades equipment to reduce water loss, and helps communities with the legal costs associated with water leases.
Source: National Geographic News Watch