As UK faces drought...10 ways to save water
Fact File
10 water-saving ideas
• Get a sink positive. It is a toilet with a sink built into the cistern so that you can flush and wash your hands with the same water – fresh for your hands and used for the toilet.
• Put food colouring into your toilet tank. If it seeps into the toilet without flushing you have a leak. Fixing it could save up to 1000 gallons of water a month.
• Reuse the water in your dehumidifier for the garden.
• Install an eco friendly showerhead. It saves 750 gallons of water a month, but make it quick - every minute you are in there is using gallons of water.
• Only order water in a restaurant if you are going to drink it. Never get a jug, go by the glass.
• Don’t flush the toilet if you are just urinating – you will save 2-3 gallons of water per flush.
• Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth. You’ll save 2 gallons of water per minute.
• Put a water gauge or old can in your garden to measure rainfall and reduce your watering accordingly.
• Choose shrubs over turf for in some areas of the garden as they require less watering. Plant in the autumn when rainfall is more plentiful.
• Give the nutrient rich water from your fish tank to your plants.
The government is staging a drought summit today (Monday) in the wake of one of the driest winters on record.
Parts of the UK, including the East Midlands and the South East, are already officially in drought.
Additionally, warnings have been issued that there will be a global water shortage of 40 per cent by 2030, due to the erratic climate and ever-increasing demand for water.
So far this winter the UK has had just 119mm rainfall – less than half the average of 257mm. This has left UK River levels at an all time low. A ban on farmers using river water to irrigate their land may be imminent .
With the drive to find renewable sources of electricity paramount, water as an inexhaustible resource, has been comparatively ignored as an area of concern and is being over extracted without being renewed.
The worldwide shortage of water will have a direct effect on food production, with a predicted 30 per cent drop in global cereal production. This will have damaging effects on the economy, with unsettling repercussions for the much of the world including the UK.
In the short term, after one of the driest winters on record, hosepipe bans could come into force in the next few weeks across Britain.
Thames Water report that 2010-2011 was the third driest two-year period in the Thames Valley and London since records began 128 years ago. "River levels are lower in many areas than they were in 1976 and many rivers in the South East have dried up completely," said a spokesman.
