4 Ways You’re Wasting Water in Your Kitchen
Tired of watching water going down the drain? Here are four tips to avoid wasting water in your kitchen.
While living in our RV, my husband and I have had to think about water usage a lot. We are able to stay in some amazing places, but some of them didn’t have water or sewer hook ups. These spots were great, as long as we could keep our water usage low. If we ran out of water, or if our waste tanks filled up, we had to leave these more remote spots to find hook ups to meet our water needs. The water tank in our RV holds 40 gallons, and the two waste tanks (one for “gray water” from the sink and shower, and one for “black water” from the toilet) are 20 gallons each. We found that by becoming very stingy with our water usage, we can go about a week between dumping our tanks.
As we are getting close to the birth of our first child, we have decided to stay in our house in Phoenix for a couple months. We knew things would change from the RV living, but we weren’t expecting how quickly we would find ourselves slipping in to old patterns. One way this is happening is that we are literally watching a lot more water going down the drain. My husband and I were talking about our water usage this week and started pointing out all the little (and not so little) ways we were wasting water, especially in our kitchen. We find ourselves to be pretty conservative when it comes to using water and electricity, but when we don’t constantly have to monitor tank levels, it’s a lot easier to let extra water usage slip.
Here are four of the ways we have found we are wasting water in our kitchen. These are common, everyday occurrences for many Americans, so I have a feeling they just might be ways you are wasting water in your very own kitchen as well.
Letting Dirty Dishes “Soak”
I just looked in my kitchen sink this morning and saw two big bowls full of water, soaking before I loaded them in the dishwasher. Why did this habit return so quickly? I don’t know! For the last eight months in the RV, we hardly ever soak our dirty dishes. Instead of filling a pot or bowl with water to soak, I’d quickly wipe it out with a half-sheet of a paper towel before the food dried. Then, when I would wash dishes, there was never any dried, crusted on food, but we also didn’t have to waste any extra water. By my calculations, these two bowls that were soaking this morning held over a gallon of water. If I did that every day, that’s about 400 gallons of water a year! Keep in mind, this doesn’t include all the rinsing of dishes that I’ve been doing in the last few days either. This water isn’t doing anything important, just being wasted before the dishes get washed.
To avoid wasting water on dirty dishes, use a rubber or silicone spatula to scrape out as much food as you are able. Then, if needed, use a small piece of paper towel to wipe out any residue you can.
Hand Washing Dishes
Many people hear the water hitting the dishes in a dishwasher and assume that it’s using a lot of water, but that’s not the case. Most of the water in a dishwasher is being recycled, spraying the dishes over and over again. The average Energy Star dishwasher only uses about 4 gallons of water per cycle. Compare that with the estimated 20 gallons of water that get used during hand washing, and that’s a lot of water savings!
If you don’t have a dishwasher and need to wash dishes by hand, the most water efficient way to clean them is to put a few inches of hot water in the sink, wash all the dishes at once, then repeat the process to rinse them. If you have two wells in your kitchen sink, you can dip the washed dishes in the hot rinse water before putting them in a dish drainer to air dry. This method can actually use less water than a dishwasher, but only if you are diligent about using the bare minimum amount of water in your sink.
Using a Garbage Disposal
When we moved in to our RV, one of the things we had trouble adjusting to was the fact that it didn’t have a garbage disposal in the kitchen sink. After 8 years of living in our house, this was something we had gotten used to. If you have a garbage disposal, you probably know the routine. Little bits of food get accumulated in the bottom of the sink, so you turn on the faucet, use the stream of water to wash down every last crumb, then allow the water to continue to run while the disposal whirls and chops the food bits to smithereens. While it may seem like it’s super convenient to wash the food particles down the sink, it’s actually a huge waste of water. All that water going is going down the drain just to wash a few pieces of food away.
You know what uses less water? Tossing those food pieces into the trash or composting bin. Really if you think about it, there’s no good reason to toss food down the garbage disposal. Food that goes into the trash can help break down the other non-food items when they get to the landfill, or it can help you create a great batch of compost to use in your garden. While a garbage disposal does keep you from having to touch a few pieces of food that have settled in your sink strainer, a paper towel can accomplish the same thing. Simply grab another little piece of paper towel and wipe out all the food particles to expose your nice, clean sink.
Drinking Reverse Osmosis Water
The final way we have been wasting water in our kitchen is one that I didn’t realize was as bad as it is. When we moved in to our house, we installed a reverse osmosis, or RO, system in our kitchen. Phoenix water is very hard and has a mineral flavor, so by having the RO system, we always had great water to drink without buying plastic bottles. What I didn’t realize is that RO systems use a lot of water to flush away the particles that are removed from the drinking water. Just how much water is used for that flushing process is up for debate on the internet. In doing a decent amount of searching, I found websites that stated 1 gallon of waste water was created in filtering 1 gallon of drinking water, that 30 gallons of waste water were created to make 1 gallon of drinking water, and literally every amount in between. While there’s not a clear answer on just how much water is flushed away in the process, it’s probably safe to say that it’s an inefficient process at best.
Since being back in our house, we have actually turned off our RO system. Hearing it gurgle and flush all that excess water through the system was making us feel guilty. While it may not remove everything that the RO system did, the filter on our fridge is doing just fine without sending all the wasted water down the drain.
If you would like to cut down on your water consumption, these are just a few easy ways to start in one room of your home. If you’d like more tips on conserving water, you can check out my episode, Go Green: 4 Tips for Saving Water in Your Home.
Until next time, I’m the Domestic CEO, helping you love your home.