{"id":4352,"date":"2009-03-29T16:00:27","date_gmt":"2009-03-29T22:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=4352"},"modified":"2009-03-29T16:00:27","modified_gmt":"2009-03-29T22:00:27","slug":"low-impact-living-steps-to-a-water-neutral-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/low-impact-living-steps-to-a-water-neutral-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Low Impact Living: Steps To A Water Neutral Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"water<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: This post was written by Jason Pelletier, and originally published<\/a> at Low Impact Living<\/a> on March 28, 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re one of those folks out there who is suffering from a bit of carbon fatigue, then a post in the NY Times\u2019 Green Inc. blog<\/a> this week\u00a0could either\u00a0provide additional motivation for green\u00a0projects or increased fear of another jargon-laden debate.\u00a0Green Inc\u00a0highlighted the growing trend of striving for \u201cwater neutrality\u201d, as highlighted at the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

The idea is gaining ground within a group of companies looking to understand and reduce their consumption of water, including Coca Cola,\u00a0whose chairman has pledged<\/a> to eventually balance out all of the water used in its products and manufacturing processes through conservation elsewhere (over 80 billion gallons worth<\/a>!).<\/p>\n

This got me to thinking: what would it take to be water-neutral in\u00a0our own homes, meaning that we don\u2019t import any net water? If we include all of the water that goes into our food and the products we consume, then it gets ugly real fast (see this post on the water content of food<\/a>, for example). But what about our direct water use – showers, irrigation, toilets, etc?<\/p>\n

Now, this would require some significant changes to a home and to local building\/health\/safety codes, since the only way to go water-neutral is to reuse graywater and harvest\/store rainwater. Both of these options now face numerous permitting and legal obstacles around the country (including some pretty counterintuitive ones, like\u00a0Utah and Colorado\u00a0bans<\/a> on capturing ANY rainwater at your home). Assuming we could, though, how much rain would it take to provide a family\u2019s annual water needs?<\/p>\n

After some pretty simple calculations, it turns out that the home of a typical family of three could be water-neutral in climates receiving roughly 25\u2033 of rainfall or more per year under the following assumptions:<\/p>\n