by Jill Nussinow, MS, RD, The Veggie Queen™, http://www.theveggiequeen.com

Water, water everywhere but not this year here in Northern California. So I’ve been thinking about water, and not just this year but for a while now. People are upset about green house gas emissions and while we are working on making changes in our driving habits, and hopefully restructuring our eating habits (decreasing red meat consumption and going veg) to reduce our CO2 emissions, we aren’t necessarily changing our water habits, until mandated.

This year, we will have local government control over how much water we can use.  The city of Santa Rosa made an offer to pay people to take out their water-guzzling lawns. They’ll pay you money (up to $600 for approved irrigation and plants) to do this as it will save water in the long run.  But what else can you do?

Sometimes the little things make a difference, which is what I’ve discovered over time. Using vegetable rinsing water to water house and garden plants. Turn off the water when brushing  your teeth. In the shower use a low flow shower head, lather up and turn off the water, then do a quick rinse. (The guys in my house are still working on this one.) Flush the toilet only when you have to in your low flow toilet. My city requires replacing old toilets with low flow but if you don’t have one you can put a brick in the tank to displace water.

I avoid plastic bottles for many reasons so I have a glass bottle that I refill with filtered water from my tap. Beyond the plastic, think about the production, packaging, transportation, and, perhaps most important of all, the disposal of millions of bottles each day.

Get creative with your water use. As I tell my culinary students, if you had to haul that water in buckets from a river or stream, you’d think a lot more about how you use it. Use it as if it could be your last drop because if we don’t change direction in this stream, one day we won’t have a stream. I’m happy that you’re part of the solution.

Jill is a fellow of The Leadership Institute for Ecology and the Economy http://www.ecoleader.org

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