The biggest single culprit is the toilet. Early low-flow toilets gave them a bad name. The newer ones work as well or better than the six-gallon-per-flush gulpers and use less than one fourth of the water. GreenHomeGuide has covered this topic and you can also check out consumer and professional reviews at Terry Love’s great site.

The newest technology (new here, that is -- it’s been around in Europe and Asia for a while) is the dual flush. One button sends a small amount of water to flush liquid waste and another button is for ... well, you get the picture.

Urinals are a new residential rage, and you can actually get ones that don’t use water at all. And no, they’re not gross. They’re also easier to install (for us less intrepid DIY’ers) since they don’t need water lines.

I’m really interested in low-flow shower heads. Water prices are about to increase a lot here in NYC and I’m pushing everyone in our building to install both low-flow toilets and shower heads. My calculations show quick paybacks for these improvements. But like the early low-flow toilets, the early water-saver showers were not very satisfying. That led many people to remove the flow restrictors. The newer ones are better; however I haven’t been able to find a good set of reviews anywhere, so I want to ask you what you’ve tried and either liked or hated. Let us know.

Most sink faucets can take screw-on aerators, which come in different flow rates. Another route is to use sensors to turn the water on and off. And in a kitchen I recently designed for a chef’s home, she requested a foot-operated faucet. She liked it for convenience and for food safety reasons, but I liked it because it actually cut down on unnecessary usage by making it easier to quickly turn the water off.

Washing machines and dishwashers are big drinkers, too. Front loaders, in general, are much more efficient than top loaders. In my Sunday paper the other day, Bosch had a splashy (no pun intended) full-page ad showing how much water would be saved if everyone used new Bosch dishwashers. They aren’t the only water-saver manufacturer out there, of course, but the ad certainly got my attention.

Being an apartment dweller, I tend to forget about lawns and watering, but GreenHomeGuide hasn’t. And as I mentioned in passing in a comment two days ago, landscaping with indigenous plants can make watering totally unnecessary. It’s just plain perverse to have huge lawns in arid areas.

There are more adventurous projects out there, too: rain water collection, graywater recycling, composting toilets. But our theme this week was on smaller starting steps.

David Bergman
Columnist, Going Green Blog