rudderless

Water water everywhere

and not a drop to drink . . .

I just finished the National Geographic issue about water. It had the usual scary receding glacier pictures (there are few things that sicken me more), and a half dozen fascinating maps of the world’s rivers. But the one statement that has stayed with me was the fact that the average American uses 100 gallons of water at home every day. Albuquerque, New Mexico, recently brought their per capita consumption down to 80 gallons, from 140 gallons per day! Where does it go? As I was filling up our drinking water jugs the other night I tried to do the math for us. As a family of four we go through about 58 gallons of freshwater a week, on the boat, for dishes, drinking, washing and cooking. Our toilet/head uses saltwater exclusively. Our tank is pumped weekly by a local pump-out boat to keep it out of the Keys waters. The girls and I shower together at the marina, with a low-flow shower head. Between ourselves and John, we use about 40 gallons a week to keep ourselves clean. We do two loads of laundry a week, which we estimate to be about 80 gallons total. That brings our total family freshwater usage to 178 gallons per week. If you go by National Geographic’s numbers, the average American family of four (like ours), uses 2800 gallons of freshwater per week.

One of the pieces in the magazine profiled a community in Ethiopia where women spend eight hours of their day walking to and from a dirty river to fetch drinking water. They wash their clothes once a year. We are clean, healthy, and well-fed. We drink all the water we want. In fact, we’ve banned juice and other sticky beverages from the boat, so water is just about all our kids drink. John and I supplement with beer. But the numbers seem staggering to me. How is our weekly total just 78 gallons more than the average American uses on a daily basis?

I found a water use calculator for Tampa, Florida and entered some guesstimations for the average family of four- two showers a day, a few baths a week, a lawn to water occasionally (in Florida, for sure!), four loads of laundry per week . . . and sure enough, I hit the 100 gallon per day mark. It must come down to a few things. Our faucets don’t run. They can’t run, as I have a foot pump to feed water to my galley sink. We don’t have a lawn or a garden. If we do in the future, we will most certainly collect rainwater for the plants. The toilet seems to be an enormous consumer. Here in the Keys, we’ve been short on water for so long that public restrooms will often sport the sign, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow . . .” I’m not advocating drastic measures, but for land-based homes, a composting toilet is looking better and better. I’ve seen dishwashers that recycle graywater/rainwater, but they seem to be fairly efficient appliances to begin with. Far better than handwashing. I have made a concerted effort to cut down on our laundry- making sure that the girls clothes are actually dirty. Rosy being out of diapers has helped. And I suppose showering is a state of mind. We don’t shower every day. If we worked in an office or got particularly gross at a job, we certainly would, but years of sailboat living have robbed us of that need. We do spend a lot of time in the pool.

We didn’t move onto the boat to save water. It is a wonderful by-product of our lifestyle, in the same way that energy conservation comes naturally on a boat fueled almost entirely by wind power and solar panels (when we’re off the dock!). But crunching numbers like this makes me truly appreciate how much we were taking for granted. Freshwater truly falling from the sky. Everywhere you look, with every faucet you turn on. And yet it defines entire existences in other parts of the world.

How lucky we are.

Treehugging Tuesday- SOAP!

A few weeks ago my liveaboard friend Behan left this comment: “In the realm of small things: speaking of fish-friendly detergent, there is this old cruising myth about Joy. Liveaboards / cruisers are supposed to love it “because it gives suds in salt water.” Somehow I don’t think it’s fish friendly, although I can’t point to a reference. And… why the fuss about suds? They’re not necessary to get clean, right? The friendly stuff still seems to work just fine. How on earth- (Earth!) can we get this myth dispelled?”

Truly, eh? We’ve tried to do without petroleum-based soaps for a couple of year now, even off the boat. Now that we’re on the boat, when I pump my sink water overboard every day, I can’t imagine using anything but biodegradable, fish-safe soap. It’s my responsibility to do stuff like that, eh? There was certainly a time, on our old boat, when we indulged in our old friends Joy and Dawn. But in the last two years or so, there are so many choices in the realm of cleaning supplies, it wouldn’t even occur to me to buy the other stuff. So, like Behan asked, why do people do it?

I assume it’s habit. It’s what you’ve always known. I can understand that. You assume the other stuff works better with its rinse agents and sudsing properties. It might, but you’re probably using too much of it anyway. It can be cheaper, certainly. But the best advice someone gave me a while back is to dilute, dilute, dilute. The soap companies want more of your business. Things have become so super-concentrated lately that you can easily replace half the soap bottle with water and still have an effective solution. The same is true of laundry detergents. If your clothes smell strongly of detergent, you’re using more than you need. Half the recommended amount will suffice in most cases. For the same reason you use less with cloth diapers, use less in normal loads. Lots of soap causes it to build up on your clothes. When we first tried Charlie’s Soap- a washing soda-based natural cleaner, they recommended running a few loads of their soap and water through the machine, just to eliminate the nasty detergent residue. Eww. It does wonders for cloth diapers.

Use better stuff, use less, and if you’re a sucker for scents, I can whole-heartedly recommend Seventh Generation’s dish soap and laundry detergent. It smells like something you might actually find in nature, not to mention that it’s made from the good stuff.

And speaking of laundry- here’s the new normal. IKEA octopus with wind blowing down the hatch. Good times.

Treehugging Tuesday

John treated me to a one-child morning last week and Rosy and I watched the No Impact Man documentary. We first read about Colin Beaven and his project three (3!) years ago when he attempted the No-Impact Year, aka The Year Without Toilet Paper, with his wife and daughter. I think like most people who read the story, we were excited about the statement he was attempting to make, and also a bit skeptical of his motives- was it simply a stunt to gain publicity and a book deal? Watching the film made me convinced that Colin has nothing but good intentions. He’s an optimist, an activist, an idealist. He admits that the extremes he and his family went to (living without electricity for 6 months, not taking the elevator to their 9th floor apartment, despite having a DOG that needed to be walked many times a day) were not meant to be replicated on a large scale. It WAS a publicity stunt; a publicity stunt for change. If we all did a tiny bit of what he did (and continues to do, on some level), we’d perhaps be a happier, cleaner, healthier society. As he says in the film, it’s not about using as little as you possibly can, it’s about using what you need in a sustainable way.

I really enjoyed the film, especially the “macro” bits, where he visits the hazmat dumps in the Bronx that are poisoning local kids, and suggests that beyond NO impact, he’d like to make a positive impact- imagine if we all took less from the environment, but worked to actually improve it! He begins to address the erosion in community- the loss of interconnectedness and this notion that our choices have no effect on our neighbors, not to mention our children and grandchildren. That’s the part I’m interested in. The idea that YOUR trash makes me sick.

Here are some links:
The No-Impact Project with its “carbon cleanse” week. I like his PDF How-Tos and the way the week is set up. He doesn’t ask you to go cold turkey (his family didn’t- they phased in new stages over the course of their No-Impact year), but rather to reflect on one piece of the puzzle each day.

The No-Impact man blog. The bits from 2007, when they were in the throes of the project, are the most compelling.

His bike. I WANT a rickshaw. So enormously cool. I have my Mamabikeorama sticker on my bike. But imagine the possibilities on this thing.

When I get down on the green stuff, biking around thinking we’re such a drop in the bucket (seriously, what I wouldn’t give to see one more family, ONE more family biking around the Keys on a regular basis), I see things like this and realize that there is a movement underway. There is community. I try to remember the small stuff people are doing: the neighbors are recycling more, so many of my friends are using cloth diapers, look at all the organic milk on the supermarket shelf! There are things to celebrate, just as there is still so much more to be done.

Happy Treehugging Tuesday.
ps- John got 47 mpg on his last tank in the TDI. We had a cocktail to celebrate that little bit of sustainable practice.

Treehugging Tuesday

A simple reminder to turn off any lights you don’t need, inside and out. Imagine the stars we’d see if more people did such a thing. I remember the Milky Way, as seen from the coast of Maine, on the night before our wedding. And the stars at Joshua Tree. Spectacular. Keep the sky dark. Click on our sidebar “Need Less” animation to learn more.

Our other sidebar feature: Fuelly. We track our fuel consumption on Fuelly and are like super-geeks when we see our mpg go up. Breaking 43 was worth some high-fives and a glass of wine. We LOVE driving diesel. Enter your stats and play along. It’s good clean fun.

Treehugging Tuesday!

John and I went to see Avatar this afternoon and with images of the ginormous (and beautiful) Hometree in my head, I hereby resurrect Tree-Hugging Tuesdays! I did a few of these on the old blog and may republish some old entries over the coming months. But the greenest thing we did all week? Potty-trained our baby!!

That’s right, Rosy is officially a potty kid. Still in cloth diapers at night and naps, but in a week we’ve cut our diaper-fueled water and electricity consumption by two-thirds!! Thank you, Roo!

Both of my girls potty trained wicked early, and with no fuss. Blessed I am. I have no secrets. Rosy was showing some real readiness signs- telling me when she peed, taking off her diapers, wanting to “rehearse” the potty rituals, going for long stretches without peeing and the DRENCHING herself to the tune of a leaky diaper. Which really prompted the efforts last week. She’s had three or four misses, but for the last three days, has been nothing but consistent. I don’t sit her on the pot and ask her to pee- we only go when she asks. She does a lot of rehearsing, and we make the bathroom super fun with lots of books and attention and love. I have stayed close to home for the past week or so, which is everything, if you ask me.

I can’t compare early potty training to any other way. I can only say I’m thankful that we’re saving diapers and water and resources, along with our sanity on the boat. I also think for us, it’s worked to do it before the stubbornness and independence of two and three set in. My friend Christie always says there’s a window, and if you miss it, you’re doomed to potty issues for the next few years. Who knows if it’s true, but I certainly happened upon that window both times and feel so lucky that my ladies jumped on board.

Here’s to the potty! We love you, Roo.
For old time’s sake, here’s an old TreeHugging Tuesday post about how we diapered the ladies. In the end, after four years of it, I am still loving prefolds and covers, just what we started with. Full circle, eh?
Sophie in what is still my favorite fleece cover.