Saving water

Image by malla_mi via Flickr

Hi everyone,

I'm Deko from Decolives. This is so exciting! It's my first appearance here on the Decolives blog. Truly sorry about not updating the blog since we started it two weeks ago. (Oh my gosh! Has it been that long?) I've been so busy trying to get everything in order for the push cart at Orchard Central and the online shop launch!

Anyway, I'm going to share a little tip about saving water with you today. But before I begin, let me just clarify that I am no environmentalist. Nor do I profess to be any sort of expert on the topic. It's just that I've had the chance to live in Taiwan for three years until recently and the exposure has highlighted to me some differences in the way we do things at home and the way others do things. It struck me then how easy it really is to make little changes to our daily habits to adopt a more earth-friendly lifestyle. In my previous job, we were always doing staff suggestions and more than half of those were frequently about the three “R's” of “reduce, reuse and recyle”. From the big boss to the company chauffeur, everyone has something to contribute on this topic! So I don't think it is true at all that environmental-friendliness is an atas (Singlish for: hoity-toity, snobbish) topic for the atas people!

So back to my little tip-of-the-day.

Besides the commonly heard advice to save water by washing on a full load, my family has always made it a habit to collect the water that drains out from our washing machine after each wash. The water from the first wash is the dirtiest and depending on how bad it is, we usually either discard it or use it to flush the toilet. As the water gets progressively cleaner after each rinse, it can either be used for flushing and washing the toilet or for other tasks like mopping the kitchen floor and hand-washing canvas shoes.

The average washing machine uses about 40 litres of water each time. That's about one-third of our daily water consumption in just one wash!

So here's when I turn a little fanatical and insist that even if you don't do all these household chores yourself, you can still instruct the maid right? Because when it comes to such precious resource as water, every little bit counts!