Sustainable water use
Developing more sustainable water use habits starts by assessing your households patterns of use. Some average water use data has been developed to help you start making more informed decisions about how you use water.
In home water use (avg. summer day)
Toilets
- Average water usage: 76 litres per person per day. That's 30% of household water.
- Low-flow toilets only use 6 litres per flush (compared to older toilets that use 20 litres or more). This equals big water savings!
Dishwasher
- Average water usage: a standard dishwasher uses 57 litres of water per load.
- Waiting for a full load before running the dishwasher saves water. If buying a new dishwasher, consider an EnergyStar®.
Laundry
- Average water usage: clothes washer uses an average of 150 litres of water per load. That's about 23% of household water.
- EnergyStar® appliances use up to 50% less water and energy! Water savings here translate into big money savings.
Bath & Showers
- Showerheads dispense anywhere between 5.7 to 18.9 litres per minute, which means a 10 minute shower uses an average of 130 litres of water. That's about 20% of household water.
- Low-flow shower heads can save up to 75 litres of water during a 10 minute shower.
Outdoor water use
- Average usage for a household is 40% of the total water usage.
- A half hour of sprinkling twice a week is sufficient for a healthy lawn (Wim Van der Zalm/Art Knapp's nursery owner).
We can all do our part to help save water in our homes and gardens. From simple things such as shutting off the tap when the water is not being used to installing water efficient appliances, there are many ways we can work to become waterwise (see tips for more ideas).
To help make saving water easy and affordable for Vancouver residents, the City of Vancouver offers the indoor and the outdoor water saver kits.
For the lawn and garden
Summertime is often when we enjoy our gardens the most, and naturally this is also the season when we spend the most amount of time watering our lawns and gardens. In fact, in Greater Vancouver the average household water demand can more than double during the summer with about 40% of the water being used for lawn sprinkling. This means the greatest amount of water is being used when there is the least amount of storage.
Until more recent years, this wasn't a concern. But with rapid population growth in the Lower Mainland, the increased demand for water led the Metro Vancouver to implement summertime lawn sprinkling regulations in 1993. The lawn sprinkling regulations have provided a fair system for lawn watering throughout the Lower Mainland, and have helped to deter the costs of increasing water supply and storage facilities. Sustainable water use also results in less disinfectant chlorine discharged into the environment, less energy consumed by water system pump stations and more water available for fisheries.
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