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Do you know how much water you use daily?
According to Water UK, 46% of people believe their household uses 20 litres of water day, but it’s actually almost 142 litres per person.
This is a major problem, because according to non-profit organisation Waterwise, many parts of the UK will face significant water deficits by 2050. And we’re starting to see the effects of this now – in July 2021, the Environmental Agency reported that 15 out of the 23 water companies operating in areas of England are rated as being under ‘serious’ stress.
Can these families reduce their water use?
Check out how The Clarkes, The Gardeners and The Kunchalas try to reduce their water use and save money.
Girl: I have a shower with my brother so. That saves water doesn't it? Yeah it saves much more water instead of separately.
Parents (individually): Did you know 46% of people believe. Their household uses less than 20 litres of water a day. But it's closer to 142 litres per person! So that's over 500 litres per day for a family of four. 450 is 900 bottles of this water.
Boy: 900 that's a huge.
Parents (individually): Many parts of the UK. Will face significant water deficits by 2050.
Boy: Wow!
Parents (individually): Right so when do we use water in our house guys? The tap.
Girl: The hose.
Parents (individually): And what about water guns?
Boy: Yeah.
Parents (individually): You love water guns don't you?
Boy: I love spraying you.
Parents (individually): Okay, thanks mate.
Parents (individually): On the website Waterwise, there are some water facts. If you have like the power showers, you are using 50 litres per minute. That means if you take a shower for ten minutes, we are using 150 litres of water.
Boy: Wow.
Girl: When I wash my hair I'm longer than ten minutes.
Parents (individually): Well you need to save some time then. So that is about half a litre and it's 12 litres in a minute, so it's 24 of those in one minute.
For one person.
That's ridiculous.
Boy: So this is our chart and I'm going to read it. Use cups instead of tap water to brush. Share the flush. Don't flush I want to go.
Parents (individually): Okay go on then.
Well done guys.
He's just got out the shower two minutes.
Boy: Five seconds.
Parents (individually): 47 seconds.
Three minutes, 15 seconds in the shower.
Was you rushing or was it just normal shower?
Girl: Rushing.
Parents (individually): You were rushing.
So I have just got out the shower, I've timed myself I was six minutes 48. Which I thought I wasn't in there very long, but obviously I was a lot longer than the children so it's definitely me that needs to improve.
And what have mummy and daddy bought for the shower to make us more efficient?
Girl: A timer.
Parents (individually): That's right.
Those two with sharing the toilet and the flushes and stuff they kept forgetting, they have a go at each other and they'd be like you weren't meant to flush it.
Especially the timer it's a great little thing. Yeah, it's good for the kids as well because they like to beat the timer. It's a great thing to introduce.
Girl: Very competitive.
**Parents (individually):**I mean, sometimes they were like in and out. Rapid.
Didn't even get wet.
Parents (individually): Have you even washed yourself?
You know, while brushing, we use cups instead of the running water. It has reduced at least three times the water we use normally.
It is a very small change we made in our life and made it very huge impact.
Know how much water you’re really using
Figure out your water habits. Do you leave the tap running when you brush your teeth? How often do you have a bath? Can you have shorter showers?
Waterwise suggests that power showers use around 15 litres of water per minute, which means a 10-minute shower uses up to 150 litres of water.
Use a cup of water when brushing your teeth
Waterwise suggests that a running tap wastes around 6 litres per minute.
When you brush your teeth, instead of leaving the tap running, why not fill a small reusable cup with water to rinse your mouth with?
Time your showers
Get a simple timer and time how long you run water during your morning routine.
The average shower usually lasts for eight minutes however a five-minute shower is adequate. By spending even at least one minute less in the shower, you can save a great amount of water.
The Energy Saving Trust suggests that spending one minute less in the shower each day could save £10 off your energy bills each year. If you have a water meter, you could save a further £17 off water and sewerage bills. And if everybody in your household stuck to a four minute shower, you could save up to £35 on energy bills and around £60 on metered water and sewerage bills every year.
Can Adam from Blue Peter reduce his water use by 'going green'?
Blue Peter's Adam Beales learns how to reduce plastic, water and energy use (as well as food waste) by going green for a week with his family at home.
Adam Beales: Hey, guys. It's me, Adam, and today I'm about to tackle my latest BP challenge. I have been sent a video message that should give me an idea of what I'm about to do. Let's take a look.
Shanti: Hello Adam. My name is Shanti and I love watching Blue Peter every week with my sisters, Ashani and Anesha. I think it's so important that we all do everything we can to protect our wonderful planet. That's why I want to challenge you to go eco-friendly and green for a week and see how far you get. Good luck!
Adam: Ooh, right. No pressure, going green for a week. What does that actually mean though?
Okay, going green for a week. Not using plastic is a big part of going green. So I think I might start there.
Time to see what plastic I can find at home. Plastic. Plastic. Plastic container. Plastic. The packaging as well. One thing that I use a lot of what I'm taking this guy on a walk is some bags to bag up his, erm…
I just picked these up in the bathroom. Some shampoo, conditioner, some body soap,toothpaste and mouthwash, all single use plastic bottles that, when I come to think of it, is actually pretty bad.
Wow. That… that's a lot. It's actually going to be really overwhelming for me to cut down on this amount.
I've got a lot of improving to do on the plastic front, so I'm getting in touch with Amy from Kids Against Plastic to see what advice she has to offer.
Amy: The best thing is to try and start small and don't try and just go completely plastic free because, you know, as you've probably already found, that's a really big and difficult step to take. So we'd always recommend that you go what we call 'plastic clever'. So you stop using four items to begin with, which are bottles, cups and lids, straws and bags, because we tend to use a lot without even realising it, but actually they're super easy to replace with things like reusable items that you can just refill yourself.
Adam: Is there any other tips outside of plastic that you can give that would help me live a green life this week?
Amy: So there's some really simple things like you can do, like even timing your showers to make sure that you're not using excess water and heat. It's a really simple way to actually reduce your water usage and your carbon footprint. Just do simple things like that.
Adam: Morning. I want to time myself to see how long I usually take in the shower. I'll try and aim for five minutes towards the end of this week.
… so good, bam bam. So good…
Okay guys, moment of truth. Whoa. Hang on a second. Ten minutes. Wow. That means I have to almost half my usual time in the shower.Another way of going green is walking and it's actually a great way to help the environment and it's a great form of exercise actually. I love walking, so I'm going to avoid using my car for the entire week.
Adam: So guys for this next bit I've brought along my lovely mum to help me, because today we're going to cook a meal with foods that we might throw out. We have eggs that are left over. A pepper! An onion! Get some ham. This sounds like a very tasty omelette. You ready to cook mum?
Mum: I'm ready to cook.
Adam: What we're doing right now is finding creative ways to use food up. Wasting food is down to a lack of imagination, remember that. Mix it right up. Don't worry, this will taste a lot better than it looks right now. Ta-da! And that is our omelette. This is our meal that we basically made from food waste.Mmm, that is nice.
I've been trying to reduce the time I spend in the shower throughout the week. Now it's time to see how far I've come. Yes, yes. Stop! Guys - four minutes, twenty seven seconds.
One thing that I've learnt to cut down on electricity use is to turn off anything that's not beingused around the house.
Adam’s brother: What are you doing?
Adam: Just turning off the TV. I need to cut down on our electricity use.
There's my dad. There's the TV. Okay, let's press the power button. Haha, he's getting up guys, he's getting up.
I'm just playing a few pranks guys, but the message still stays the same. If you're around in the house and you see plugs being left on when they're not really being used, just turn them off. We have a lamp here that's turned on. No one here is sitting in the living room. So we can go ahead and turn it off.
I think doing this for me has made me realise how easy it is to live a greener life. And we're not asking you to be like green experts by the end of this. I think if we all just make a tiny difference, that would make the world of difference globally. So, yeah. I really enjoyed this challenge.
Make a difference
Discover more about the planet and how to protect it with the BBC.
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Konnie Huq on living a sustainable life
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