Sierra Club Green Home

As summer blends into fall, the annual clearing of clogged rain gutters looms for most homeowners. A thankless but necessary job, it seems no matter what kind of gutters one has, they’re going to require a trip up the ladder. Someone has finally invented a system that changes all this. (Photo courtesy of MasterShield)

SAN FRANCISCO — The EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park is the city’s first building that is completely off the power grid. It features on-site solar energy generation, rainwater collection, and sewage treatment—taking advantage of the sun, the rain, and the natural surroundings. “We don’t want to connect to the grid,” says Tracy Zhu, EcoCenter program manager. (Photo by OpenHomesPhotography.com, courtesy of EcoCenter)

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.

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 1.6 gallons per flush. All toilets sold in the U.S. are low-flow toilets, although in the toilet trade they’re actually called “ultra low flush toilets” or ULFTs.

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 [...]

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.

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.

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. [...]

Get out the lead, and more Most drinking water in the United States tastes good and is good for you. But some people don’t like the way their tap tastes. And others have reason to believe it is contaminated with lead, pesticides, fluoride, arsenic, or other unsavory substances. If you drink bottled water because you’re concerned [...]