Don't Shower Alone

I don't think this needs a lot of explanation. Just don't linger too long, or you won't save water over two separate showers.

Spend less money, help the environment.

Catch Rain Water

Thousands of gallons of water may be falling on your roof like pennies from heaven. One inch of rain on a 1000 sq. ft. roof will give you about 623 gallons of runoff. With rain barrels, screened-over food-grade drums, or other similar containers (think of your own DIY options), you can use this free water for around the yard. Most containers will accept an attached hose, or can be modified to do so by drilling a 3/4 inch hole and adding a screw-in spigot. Attach a regular hose or soaker hose, and you can distribute the water where you need it, just as you did before.

You will save money over paying for municipal water - more if you are not exempt from sewage charges on your outside water usage. You can water whenever you like, which is more than just a convenience if your city or borough restricts summer watering days.

You will help to reduce municipal water usage and conserve local natural water supplies, all with a replacement that happens to deliver itself to your house. It makes being conservative fairly easy.

Spend less money, help the environment.

Use Your Dishwasher More Often

There are too many articles to count that say you use less water by running the dishwasher rather than hand washing or pre-rinsing your dishes. But choosing the dishwasher over the tap can also help if you need to clean your recyclables before placing them in the recycling bin. (You can also slip a few bottles / jars in with your usual load of dishes.)

You'll save money if household recycling costs you less than your refuse service. And you'll use less water cleansing your recycling if you need to do so, also saving a few pennies.

Spend less money, help the environment.

Convert Your Toilet To Dual-Flush

A common toilet may use gallons of water per flush. And you pay for it all. But a modern toilet will flush on about 25% of that.

Go to a home improvement store. Look for a product like HydroRight, less than $20 USD. You will need about ten minutes to put it in. You will use no tools. You will not need to turn off the water.

First, read all the instructions before starting. When you remove the product from the packaging, there's a white cable tie on it. Don't cut this! It's not packaging. It's part of the product.

Flush to lower the water level, and then unsnap and remove the flapper. Yes, the water just keeps running continuously into the bowl. We'll stop it soon. Insert the device in place of the flapper, and attached it to the vertical fill tube, tightening it with the white cable tie. Now the water stops running out the bottom. Remove the flush handle, and run the cable from the device over to the handle hole. Insert the back-side of the new flush button in the handle hole, and snap on the front of the new flush button. Calibrate according to the instructions, until the toilet just barely flushes using the top half of the new flush button, and using the least water with the bottom half (which presses the whole button).

Using the top half of the new flush button, you'll use about 25% of the water in the tank. Using the bottom half , you'll use about 66% of the water in the tank.

Spend less money, help the environment.

If You Pay For Refuse By The Bag, Divert More

If you pay by the bag to have your trash hauled away, you can save money by throwing away less and diverting more. By defining "diverting" as "not throwing it in the waste bin", any recycling effort, composting effort, or reuse effort contributes to your household diversion ratio (what you divert versus what you throw away). "On-site diversion" is any effort whereby something never reaches the curb, such as composting of kitchen scraps, and not only saves you money in haul-away fees, but also provides free compost, saving more money. But if your recycling is free or a fixed rate, then recycling will save you money as well versus the per-bag fee. Our landfills will last longer, saving our municipalities the costs, and thereby our tax dollars.

Not sending waste to a landfill or incinerator has environmental benefits as well. Carrots, cabbages, and newspapers, all things you might think would break down in a landfill, have been found still intact over thirty years later. The things we were taught would breakdown in the landfill are not, along with the plastics and metals we knew would still be there, leaching their components into the soil and water table over time. Incineration immediately releases the components into the air even faster than landfill decay would release them. So increasing our household diversion ratio benefits the environment.

The decision is made next to the shopping cart, not next to the waste bin.

Once you have carried a product home, you have a limited number of ways to dispose of packaging and waste. Select your purchases based on how you will divert the waste. Often you will find that bulk purchasing of items in recylceable packaging, loose materials from bins carried home in your own bag, and products wrapped simply in paper, are less costly as well.

Spend less money, help the environment.

Use Free Shipping

Of course using free shipping can save you money, assuming you are only ordering what you need, and the total cost is lower than the cost of the item(s) plus shipping from another vendor.

But if you consider that one package delivery truck moving about through your neighborhood uses less gasoline than if everyone went to the store for an item, there's an environmental angle as well. Buy.com quotes a Carnegie Mellon study to back this claim, as well as several other points about green e-retailing. I assume other online retailers can make the same claim, and the bigger they are the more they can reduce pollution per item via economy of scale. So consider a free shipping option to get dry goods and sundry items to your household. Even with shipping in items from a distance, it still may be a better option for the planet as well as your pocketbook.

Spend less money, help the environment.

Use A Massaging Shower Head

The massage setting on the shower head pulses the jets; it turns them "off" intermittently. Mine uses about 40% less water this way. And I pay for water by the gallon. If you are on a well, you are paying for the electricity to pump the water instead.

Spend less money, help the environment.