Cape Town – With Western Cape dam levels at 26% and less then 135 days of useable water left, saving water is not on option or a "trend".
The water crisis hit South Africa hard and it's about time we start to get serious on water saving. Here are a few extreme water saving tips that you might – or might not – want to consider.
1. Shower every other day...and keep it short. Two-minute showers should suffice. If you're feeling adventurous, take a Navy shower. This means getting yourself wet as soon as you turn the shower on, turn it off while you wash and finally turn it back on to rinse off.
Don't forget to use the Cape Argus Shower Song to help keep your shower short:
2. Wash your clothes in the shower. During your two-minute shower (see above), wash your clothes under your feet. Kill two birds with one stone.
3. Is eight glasses of water a day really necessary? How about six...or four? Being healthy is important, but do this for your country.
4. Stop shaving. Imagine how much water would be saved if it wasn't for that all that rinsing?
5. Umm, this one may be stretch but we did say extreme: Don't wash your underwear after one wear. Re-use them by turning it inside out.
6. Don't use the toilet for peeing. A woman featured on American show 'Extreme Cheapskates' urinated in a jar. She then carried it out to her garden and used it as fertiliser.
7. Collect rainwater in buckets. Not all of us have money for water storage tanks so use what you have to harvest rainwater.
Some of the above methods are radical and not quite what we're used to. However, our water crisis is not a joke. So let's all do our bit to save water.
Sources:
http://www.moneycrashers.com/money-saving-tips-extreme-cheapskates/
http://www.accountingdegree.com/blog/2010/100-extreme-ways-to-save-serious-money/
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-50-extreme-saving-tips-399047