May 15, 2006

My New Soapbox : Greywater Recycling

So, I'm into greywater recycling! Lately I've been doing this. Which is a very easy way to reuse not-so-dirty water in a drought-friendly kind of way. There are 2 trees in my backyard (a pear tree and an I don't know what it is but it has red leaves tree) who are LOVING the new water-conserving me.

I thought the red-leaved tree was dead. Dead-dead. But, I noticed this afternoon that it finally put out some leaves! May is pretty late to be putting out leaves, but at least it's not dead. Just a late bloomer. Water always helps.

The guy from the city water conservation department came by a couple of weeks ago and gave me ideas of how to save water, but also make sure our trees are getting enough. I'm happy to report, that thanks to Clyde, I saved my forsynthia, too! I'll post a picture later.

Anyway, another new thing is RAIN BARRELS. People in arid climates have been using rain barrels for centuries and I'm finally jumping on that bandwagon, too. I'm thinking about these or these. What I like about the second link is that those barrels are re-used barrels that were originally used to ship Greek Peppers to the U.S. How cool is that?

Lastly, I'm trying to talk my Hubby into letting me reuse my laundry rinse water! It means an extra rain barrel, in the laundry room no less, with maybe a hose (through the wall?) outside, with a drip system, to some of our other trees. Root for me and my tree roots will love you forever!

"Why don't you just get a front-loader washer that only uses about 1/3 as much water?"

I'm working on that, too! But give me a break, even if I use less water, it's still MORE cool to use it twice!

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:24 PM

    it was daniela's dad who was FIRST to suggest grey water!!!
    and he does check her blogs at least twice a day.

    dad

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  2. Anonymous3:21 PM

    hi d--

    what you need is a washer as old as i have. it will allow you to wash with the same water over and over again, until you push the button to tell it to drain. my mom said that's how they used to do it, but not being so committed, i have just let load after load drain through the hose, into the large garbage can with a hole in teh bottom and then to our floor drain. happy conservation!
    -wendy

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  3. Anonymous8:40 AM

    YUCK!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete