Living Like Ed (7 page)

Water comes at such high environmental cost for the fish, and for the people, too. In the Owens Valley lots of folks have respiratory problems and what have you. A bit of a dust bowl thing has occurred there. It’s been an on-going problem for many, many years because of the way they sold off their water rights so we could thrive here in Southern California. But the plant and animal species, as well as the human population, are paying dearly for this transaction.

Water also requires a great deal of energy to move from place to place. One of the biggest energy bills for the infrastructure of the State of California is pumping water. Certainly it takes a great deal of energy to pump water into the California Aqueduct. Gravity does most of the work getting water through the William Mulholland project from the Owens Valley, I’m told, but once in the California Aqueduct, the water must be pumped over mountain ranges. The water that comes from the Colorado River also requires a tremendous amount of energy.

Ways to Save Water

How can you save water? There are so many ways. Some involve simply changing a habit. Others might involve changing a piece of equipment in your home. But none are really all that complicated, when you come right down to it.

                  When I first moved in with Ed, he would come in and turn off the water when I was brushing my teeth. It never occurred to me that I was wasting water. I just liked the sound of water running while I was brushing my teeth; it seemed comforting.

I thought everyone did it. Well, not in this house. I’ve learned about a million different ways to save water, and I’m getting much better at it. I know, because Ed shows me the water bill every month!

Sometimes Rachelle will turn on the water in the bathroom and then go, “Oh, wait. I’ve gotta call Jennifer.” And then she’ll get on the phone and the water will be running and all I can see in my mind are fish flopping in the mud in Northern California.

When you’re brushing your teeth—or doing anything—turn off that water if you’re not actually using it. That’s really important. It’s an easy habit to change and it definitely saves water. Fill the sink and use that water to rinse off your razor while you’re shaving, rather than leaving the water running. If you’re doing just a few dishes, put the stopper in the sink and fill it partway with soapy water, rather than letting the water run while you do the dishes or running the dishwasher with just a partial load inside.

You also can purchase a flow restrictor for the tap, not to mention a low-flow showerhead to reduce water usage.

                  Ed eventually started timing my showers. He’d come in and say, “You know, you’ve been in there for like ten, fifteen minutes!” I’m like, “How do you know?” And he was standing outside the bathroom timing me, telling me how many gallons of water I had used. I’ve cut back since then. Ed can tell you exactly how many gallons of water I’ve saved ever since!

I do a navy shower. I get wet and then I turn off the water while I soap up. And then I rinse off. I use very little shower water.

If you’ve ever been on shipboard when there’s a long cruise and a small vessel, you’re allotted a certain amount of water each day. You can drink it, you can shower with it, you can do whatever you want with it, but once you’ve used up your allotment, you’re done, because they have only a certain amount of fresh water on board.

I try to go through every day as I if I were on board a boat, and not exceed my own personal allotment of water. Each of us has only a certain amount of fresh water. But I think there’s a certain amount of denial. People waste water all the time, doing all sorts of crazy things, like hosing off their sidewalks!

I plan to teach my daughter, Hayden, about navy showers. But right now she’s not using very much water, either, since she takes a bath. When we fill her bathtub, that’s a fixed amount of water.

There are plenty of other ways to save water around the house, particularly in the garden. Obviously, it’s smart to choose plants that don’t require more water than you normally get in your area. That means avoiding tropical plants if you live in the desert. You’ll also want to capture as much rainfall as you can, using a rain barrel or some other water-collection system. That way, you can use rainwater when you need additional irrigation for your plants, instead of turning on the hose or the sprinklers. (We’ll go into more detail about water-wise gardening in Chapter 5, “In the Garden and Kitchen.”)

Take Care of Your Toilets

Another way to save water around your home is to replace old toilets. In 1989 I replaced every toilet in the house with a low-flush toilet. Some older toilets use as much as 6 gallons of water per flush. The new low-flow toilets use just 1.6 gallons.

In Los Angeles, city code mandates that every new toilet installed must be a low-flush model. That really makes a difference.

And here’s another habit worth breaking: Don’t use your toilet as a wastebasket. Why would you waste water to dispose of something that can go into an actual wastebasket or go into the compost pile or into a recycling bin?

You also can check pretty easily to see if your toilet has a leak. You just put a little food coloring or a special leak detector in the toilet tank. If that leak detector makes its way down from the tank into the toilet bowl and the water in the bowl turns that color, you know you’ve got a leak—and that means you’re wasting water.

Nontoxic Paint

I’ve been using nontoxic paint for years, since I first moved into this house. Whenever I bought paint, I sought out the least toxic stuff available. That was a challenge in the early ’90s, and even in the mid- to late ’90s, it was not that easy to find earth-friendly paints.

Fortunately, it’s gotten a little bit easier. There’s a nice selection of stuff that won’t harm the environment and that also goes on smoothly and provides good coverage. In Southern California, paints are required by law to have a low level of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but wherever you may be, you’ll want to buy nontoxic paint—or nontoxic anything—whenever it’s available for a project you’re doing. You can even find zero-VOC paints, if you try, as well as nontoxic paint strippers.

                  It wasn’t a challenge just to find this stuff a few years ago. It was a challenge to live with it. The nontoxic paints chipped really easily. But now they’re making better and better paints, with a great choice of colors, and they’re longer lasting and more durable. And that’s a good thing, because my husband will never use anything else. Using nontoxic paints
is
important. If you’ve gone into anyplace newly painted and smelled the intense fumes—and I kind of like the smell—that stuff’s really toxic. Van Gogh and all those painters went crazy because of all the heavy metals and toxins in the paint. It’s like the expression “mad as a hatter,” which refers to all the chemicals used to shape the hats, which eventually caused neural damage. That toxic stuff just makes you crazy. So thank goodness they’ve come up with some nontoxic paints that are good for the environment and good for your health and good for your home’s style, too.

Traditional paint
has
got all kinds of nasty stuff in it: petrochemicals, solvents, mercury, formaldehyde, benzene, lead, cadmium, chromium, dibutyl, and diethyl phthalate. This frightening chemical cocktail then releases VOCs into the air.