Sierra Club Green Home

Solar water-heating systems are different from the solar systems that make electricity. Collectors on your roof still grab energy from the sun, but in this case the energy is used to heat water. Of course not everyone has the right roof or enough sun to do the job. But the average U.S. household spends 11% of its energy budget heating water.

Heating water in our homes accounts for 17% of all home energy use in the United States. The first step in shrinking your water heating energy is to conserve. The less hot water you use, the less you’ll pay for energy and the smaller your carbon footprint will be. To do this, you don’t need to endure cold showers–you just need to use your hot water wisely.

What do you do with the water that remains after a long, hot bath? Send it down the drain, most likely. Before you pull the plug in your bathtub, consider reclaiming the sudsy but still valuable H2O to water your lawn. Sound strange? It’s not.

Owen Bailey shows us how to install a low-flow showerhead to reduce water consumption and energy use.

A better flush

Watch this video from GoGreenTube to learn how to identify if your toilet is water-wise or not!
Let’s talk toilets. They use more water than anything else in our homes, accounting for as much as 40% of indoor water consumption. Since 1994, federal law has mandated that new toilets use no more than [...]

Not just a drop in the bucket
Watch Sierra Club’s Owen Bailey install a low-flow showerhead.

Seventy-five percent of the Earth is covered with water but only 1% of that is available for human use. Water supplies are finite–there’s the same amount of water on the planet now as there was 2 billion years ago. But demand [...]

Get out the lead, and more
Most drinking water in the United States tastes good and is good for you. There’s no need to filter it. But some people don’t like the way their water tastes. And others have reason to believe their water is contaminated with lead, pesticides, arsenic, or other unsavory substances.
If you drink [...]

For the salmon, the climate, and your wallet
Most of us take water for granted. But using more than we need costs us money and harms the environment by depriving other creatures of this vital liquid. In California, for example, so much water is drawn out of the rivers that some fish species are threatened with [...]