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As a result of Yearly Meeting Gathering, and the re-think it inspired, I’ve done various things to be more part of a low-carbon sustainable (Quaker) community. There wasn’t a huge amount of scope for easy changes – I thought I’d done most of those – but there was and is still room for improvement.

First up was thinking about water use. Pam Lunn’s Swathemore lecture listed a series of ‘peaks’ – vital resources that, like oil, may peak in supply terms in the next few years.  Water conservation wasn’t a new issue for us. In both this and our previous house, we’ve done various things, including moving the combi-boiler to reduce the distance hot water has to travel and the amount of cold water that has to run before you get warm stuff. But it’s still surprising how much lovely clean water just goes straight down the plug-hole. The answer (for us) is a jug. For a while I searched charity shops for something old and earthernware, but then I remembered we had this from a previous house where the water needed filtering before it tasted good.

It holds 1.5 litres, and is sometimes full before the water starts to run warm – even though it’s travelling only a very short distance and we have a super-duper new condensing combi-boiler. There’s no problem emptying the jug again – the water gets used to fill the kettle which it’s handily next to; to cook vegetables (the oven is just out of shot); to water the house plants, or even, since it’s by the back door, to top up the hen’s water container. The presence of a jug full of run-off water also reminds me – if I need to just rinse my hands, don’t use the hot tap – the water won’t be warm by the time I’ve finished, but the boiler will have fired up.

It will take a little while to know whether it makes any difference to how much water we use. We put a water meter in almost exactly 2 years ago, so measuring any change will be possible. Since the water meter went in, we have been more conscious of water-use. (That’s the point, isn’t it? Water companies reckon that meters reduce usage by 5-15%.) We use an average of 190 litres a day. That sound like a gob-smacking amount, doesn’t it? In fact, since that’s our household use, we’re actually doing far better than the UK average, which according to Ofwat is 153 litres per day per person. I worked out that our usage is 20 buckets a day.  I can’t imagine carrying that much home in a bucket on my head. If the tap was at the end of our street, I’d still be at it most of the day.

So, I’ve found myself asking N, as he waited for me to finish washing my face before going to bed, if he can spot ways I can get the soap off with less water. His answer was along the lines of ‘ No, not really. I think how you wash your face is fine.’ There was a pause. ‘But you don’t need to turn the tap on so much when you rinse your toothbrush’. He’s right. I rinse my toothbrush out, several times whilst I’m cleaning my teeth, by turning the tap on fully and waving the toothbrush under the very satisfying whoosh of water, then turning the tap off with a jolt.  And it’s wasteful. But boy, is it a hard habit to break!

Still room for improvement….