Want to conserve water for the earth and keep your bill low as a bonus?

There are some basic tips you can follow. The most obvious one is checking for leaks. Your bathroom equals about 75% of the water that you use each day inside your home. That’s already a lot, so if you have a leak it can be much worse than a leak elsewhere, such as in the kitchen.

If your toilet, faucets, or hose bibs have leaks in them it can cost you as much as 200 gallons of water per day, so check them often! Put in a low-flow showerhead, install a low-flow toilet, take showers instead of baths, and you’ll be on your way to serious water savings, measured in gallons per minute. But the bathroom isn’t the only place you can save water!

In the kitchen, buy a water-saving dishwasher and wash only full loads at a time – you’ll actually use less water than washing the dishes by hand. Don’t rinse the dishes before loading them, and put in a low-flow faucet aerator, which can cut your water use in half, saving you one to two gallons per minute when the water is on.

You should follow the same basic rules with your clothes washer – only full loads and buy a water-saving model. These models may cost a little more initially, but you could save up to 40 gallons per load, which really adds up over time.