Drops Need Watts — Save Water & Energy by Showering Better

Posted Thursday, December 23, 2021

Water and energy work together. Have you ever picked up a gallon of water or milk from the fridge? It’s pretty heavy, right? A lot of energy is used to carry every gallon of water you use from a drinking water source to a treatment plant that makes it safe to drink.

After the water leaves the treatment plant, more energy is needed to move it through water pipes to your house. Imagine the journey it has taken — and just how tired you would be after carrying that much water all day!

And the work doesn’t stop there. If you want that water to be hot, it takes energy to warm it up before it hits the tap. Here’s some food for thought — the energy it takes to treat and deliver the water that just 10 houses use in a year could power your home’s refrigerator for more than two years!

That’s why it’s so important not to waste water at home. Don’t leave the water on when you brush your teeth. Make sure to turn off the faucet after you wash your hands. If water drips from the faucet after you turn it off, it could be a leak. One of the best places to save both water and energy at home is in your shower. Besides taking shorter showers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense program has some tips for how you and your family can “shower better.”

Showering Facts

The shower is a place where we can clean up, cool off, wake up, or relax after a long day. But it’s also a place where we waste a lot of water and energy! Consider this:

• The average shower lasts eight minutes. Since a standard showerhead has a water flow of 2.5 gallons per minute, each shower uses 20 gallons of water!
• Across the United States, we use more than one trillion gallons of water each year just for showering.

Never fear! You can still save water and energy. WaterSense has a special label for showerheads that use less water but still provide a great spray of water when you shower. If your family uses a WaterSense labeled showerhead:

• Every shower, you’ll save enough electricity to power a 60-watt light bulb for eight hours.
• Every year, you’ll save the amount of water it takes to wash more than 70 loads of laundry.

To make it easy to try a water and energy-saving showerhead, Skagit PUD offers water efficiency kits that contain a WaterSense multi-mode massage showerhead and ultra-efficient faucet aerators for just $11. The kits can be purchased at our Mount Vernon office.