Painting a Healthy Picture

It seems that we have always wanted to decorate our surroundings. Cave paintings may have been made by early Homo sapiens as long as 40,000 years ago, using ochre (yellow), iron oxide (red), manganese oxide (brown), and charcoal (black).

When it comes time for you to spruce up your cave a bit, you should consider what you are putting on your walls, and what your family is breathing in.

Most wall paint has four components: pigment, binder, solvent, and additives.


1. Pigments make colour, of course, but they can also provide toughness, texture, special properties or lower cost. They can be natural from plants, sands, and different soil types, (various clays, calcium carbonate, mica, silicas, and talcs) or synthetic (calcined clays, blanc fixe, precipitated calcium carbonate, and synthetic silicas).

2. Binders carry the pigment, and it provides stickiness, binds the pigments together, and strongly influences such properties as gloss potential, exterior durability, flexibility, and toughness. An early binder was made from egg and called “tempera.” When it dried, it hardened and stuck onto the painted surface. Egg tempera was used in early Egyptian sarcophagi decorations. Prominent egg tempera artists include nearly every painter of the Italian Renaissance before 1500 AD. Then it was superseded by the invention of oil painting.

3. Solvents control curing properties, flow, application properties, and the stability of the paint while liquid. These volatile solvents impart their properties temporarily—once the solvent has evaporated or disintegrated, the remaining paint is fixed to the surface.

4. Additives can modify surface tension, improve flow properties, improve the finished appearance, increase wet edge, improve pigment stability, impart antifreeze properties, control foaming, control skinning, and act as catalysts, thickeners, stabilizers, emulsifiers, texturizers, adhesion promoters, UV stabilizers, flatteners (de-glossing agents), and biocides to fight bacterial growth. They are everywhere.

Solvents and additives are often volatile organic compounds (VOCs), organic chemicals that easily evaporate at room-temperature conditions. VOCs include both man-made and naturally occurring chemical compounds, and many are dangerous to human health or cause harm to the environment. VOCs are typically not acutely toxic, but instead have compounding long-term health effects. Because the concentrations are usually low and the symptoms slow to develop, research into VOCs and their effects is difficult.

Since people today spend most of their time at home or in an office, long-term exposure to VOCs can contribute to sick building syndrome. In offices, VOCs result from paint, new furnishings, carpeting, wall coverings, and office equipment such as photocopy machines, which can off-gas VOCs into the air, even after the smell is gone. Studies show that leukemia and lymphoma can increase through prolonged exposure to VOCs in the indoor environment.

You can buy paint without any VOCs, and one brand is Mythic paint (www.mythicpaint.com). They report that, in 2007, a leading, independent laboratory service performed side-by-side tests comparing Mythic paint and other leading paint brands – both their eco-friendly and premium lines. Tests focused on subjective performance including thickness, sheen, sag resistance, flow and leveling. Mythic paint was found to be equal to, if not better than competitors’ paint. Then they tested for resistance and durability with the ‘Scrub Test’ – the industry’s gold standard in paint performance testing.

Mythic paint substantially outperformed in these tests by 1.5 to 8 times the durability of the competitors. However, it is not appropriate for metal or damp basements.



Two other non-VOC paint manufacturers are American Formulating and Manufacturing (www.afmsafecoat.com) and BioShield (www.bioshieldpaint.com). BioShield has distributors in Canada.







There is also Boomerang recycled paint (www.boomerangpaint.com), which is what we used in our house and loved it. Laurentide Inc., the Quebec-based manufacturer, has been making its paint from the dribs and drabs left at the bottom of paint cans for the last 12 years.


Boomerang latex paint (low-VOC, in 16 colours) is a top quality product that can be used in most rooms wherever a durable, washable, low-luster finish is desired. The colours are beautiful, and it is the best paint to apply that we have ever used. Plus, it is about half the price of chemically laden paint.

So, when you have the urge to redecorate your cave, be mindful of the impact on your health and the environment and look for non-VOC or low-VOC recycled paint.

Floored

When we realized the complexity of choosing a good indoor walking surface for our house we were, in a word, floored. Of course, we wanted to use a sustainable material and we were surprised about what was sustainable and what was not.

We started with some common-sense guidelines. A sustainable floor should not

• Take a long time to grow or produce. We think of renewable materials as being sustainable, but conventional wood flooring, such as oak and maple, contribute to the degradation of our forests because they take an inefficient amount of time to regrow to a mature size.

• Be heavy to transport or come from a distant location because transportation usually uses fossil fuels. This is a drawback of marble, stone, terrazzo, and terra cotta unless you already have them available in your backyard.

• Be manufactured from petroleum – that eliminates vinyl. In addition, burning vinyl can release dioxins and other hazardous chemicals. Harmful additives such as phthalates and heavy metals can leach out of the estimated 150,000 metric tons of vinyl discarded each year in Canada.

So what’s left?


Well, some hardwood flooring is acceptable if it is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Canada certified, an international certification system supported by WWF Canada, Greenpeace, and the David Suzuki Foundation. They certify every step of the industry from the forests to the supplier, providing a chain of documentation for the buyer. The increasing popularity of FSC certified wood has brought the cost to only 0-15% higher than non-certified market prices, creating an affordable environmental choice for concerned consumers. Do your research, because other certification systems are industry or government backed and do not provide legitimate proof that their wood is actually from sustainable sources. Re-used wood flooring is clearly the best idea if you can find it nearby.

Sealed concrete floors are popular for industrial and commercial areas. They are cheap, durable, and easy to maintain, but concrete is extremely energy intensive to make and transport, and produces a significant amount of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Geopolymer concrete uses "fly ash," an industrial by-product, as a substitute for Portland cement, the most widely produced man-made material on earth. So geopolymer concrete may be worth considering.

Laminate is a floor covering that looks similar to hardwood but is made with a plywood or medium density fiberboard (MDF) core with a plastic laminate top layer. HDF laminate consists of high density fiberboard topped by one or more layers of decorative paper and a transparent protective layer. Laminate may be more durable than hardwood, but is often made of melamine resin, a compound made with formaldehyde. There has been increasing concern about indoor air quality from releases of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from building materials made with formaldehyde.


Recycled rubber flooring is incredibly tough and good looking. Typically made from recycled tires, this flooring is generally considered a "low-impact," environmentally friendly building material. Flooring that contains recycled rubber is a cheaper and more durable choice than synthetic or virgin rubber with less environmental impact. However, this flooring does emit some volatile organic compounds, but they are minimal and it does not contain polyvinyl chloride or formaldehyde.

Along with FSC certified wood, bamboo is a renewable resource. It typically stops growing and falls down after six years, so it might as well be used. A bamboo floor is beautiful and harder than an oak floor, but recent demand has flooded the market with manufacturers that are producing poor quality flooring made with toxic adhesives. Typically, newer manufacturers are choosing premature bamboo stalks and not kiln drying their bamboo enough. In addition, some are using poorly operated mills so the production of bamboo flooring has social impacts on labour, requires transit energy, contains little to no recycled material, can negatively impact ecosystems, and can have a negative effect on indoor air quality. To date, bamboo forests have not replaced natural forest areas but they do create a monoculture which has less biodiversity.

Cork is harvested from the bark of the cork oak tree every nine to eleven years, allowing the tree to live its full life expectancy of 150 to 250 years. Cork is colourful and very beautiful but it might accumulate small nicks and gouges if you have young children. Its unique cellular structure has natural thermal and acoustic insulation, creating a warm and quiet surface to walk on. Cork, with its 100 million prism-shaped air-filled cells per cubic inch, creates a low impact surface that is great for the back, feet, and joints. It is naturally antimicrobial, and it creates a comfortable atmosphere for those living and playing closer to the ground.

Natural linoleum is made primarily from linseed oil, rosin, sawdust, corkdust, limestone, and jute. It is natural, available in a wide range of styles and colors, reasonably priced, durable, and easy to install and clean. However, it may curl over time, wear out if thin, or be somewhat difficult to repair. It also has a slight odour so sensitive people will want to test a sample to be certain they are not bothered by the smell. The quality of the flooring can make a big difference in its wearability, so choose a well-known brand with a good warranty.

Carpets, whether made from natural or artificial ingredients, accumulate dust, mites, molds, bacteria and other pollutants that can affect health. After installation, off-gassing can occur for weeks or months requiring increased ventilation. Carpet backings are made up of a polypropylene mesh or jute with a latex bonding agent that may have high VOC’s. Most carpets are also treated for stain and fire resistance, and these treatments can also be a source of emissions.

Seagrass carpet comes from a grass grown in the paddy fields of China. After sea water is used to flood the fields, the grass is harvested, dried, spun into a durable yarn, and woven into carpet. Coir carpet is made from coconut husks that are soaked for many months, beaten, washed, and dried. The resulting pale fibers are then spun into a type of yarn. Because it is susceptible to water damage, coir carpet should not be installed in kitchens and baths, but it is a durable, tough floor covering.

So those are just some of the choices. What did we choose? Cork. Even though it travelled from Portugal, no trees were cut to make our cork flooring. It is beautiful, resilient, durable, easy to maintain, and warm. Perfect for an in-floor heating system and just what we wanted on our floors.

Gardening Without Watering

When we moved to our earth-sheltered home from the farm, one of our goals was to reduce our required maintenance. We enjoyed the farm routine, but sheep, pigs, cattle, chickens and horses, not to mention the pastures they lived on, all had their own requirements and timetables. So we’ve gone completely in the other direction. We gave away our lawn mower, sold the tractor and implements with the farm, and now we don’t even own a household pet.

It worked. Our required maintenance is at a minimum (except for cutting firewood for the winter), but we still enjoy working outside when we want to. We have a vegetable garden, are building a scree garden and soon will be planning a butterfly garden.

Now most people can recognize a vegetable or a butterfly, but what is “scree”? Technically, it is an accumulation of weathered rock fragments at the foot of a cliff or hillside, often forming a sloping heap, and is sometimes called talus. Well, we don’t plan on gardening in that, so our scree garden is on a much smaller scale with much finer rock.

We are planting a beautiful perennial scree garden that requires no watering, no fertilizing and very little weeding.

A scree garden is a form of xeriscaping, a portmanteau of xeros (Greek for “dry”) and landscaping. As you can imagine, xeriscaping refers to a method of landscape design that minimizes water use. We first found out about it from Keith Squires from The Country Squires Garden in Campbellville, who gave an evening talk at our local library.



Scree gardening begins with the base, a minimum 45 cm-deep bed of Granular A road gravel. That’s right, the gravel that is used as a base under all roads in Ontario. Granular A is sand and crushed gravel with particles all under 2.5 cm in size. It is a strong base material used as an untreated road surface or for driveways and paths to provide strength while maintaining good drainage.

Will plants grow in this stuff? Keith Squires has been doing it for decades; you just need the right plants. These aren’t the pampered pansies that need mulch, organic material, loam, topsoil, fertilizing and daily watering. These are the tough, hardy, independent, beautifully flowering plants that naturally grow in many places in Ontario. In fact, for our garden, we are only using species native to Ontario.

Because the plants are adapted to these conditions, you don’t need to water them. Their roots plunge through the scree and into the soil below. You also don’t need to weed much, since most weed seeds that blow in are fried by the sun on the surface of the scree. An hour a week is all the time you have to spend, but I’ll bet you end up spending a lot more because:

· By lowering your consumption of water, you make more water available for other domestic and community uses and the environment.

· With less time needed for general maintenance, you can (if you wish) shape, prune, pluck and do the fine tuning that makes a garden look spectacular, even up close.

· You will have more time to enjoy your garden; a scree garden is simpler and less stressful. It will be slower growing than a soil garden but, by the second and third years, it will fill in nicely.

Planning is the key. Choose a site, mark its boundaries and excavate the area to a depth of at least 45 cm, then fill it with gravel. Select your plants carefully; below is a list of what we have planted so far, but there are so many to choose from.

I’ll just talk about the two that I am most pleased with so far: Little Bluestem and Prickly Pear Cactus. They’re associated with other locales, but both are native to Ontario.

Little Bluestem was the anchor of the tallgrass prairie, and fed bison, horses and cattle. Reliably perennial, Little Bluestem grows to a typical height of one metre. Although it has a blue tint in the spring, it is more reddish in the fall and throughout winter into spring. Nice to have a bit of prairie in our front yard for any bison that happen to be passing by.

Prickly Pear Cactus is native to certain areas of Southern Ontario. The fruit of prickly pears — commonly called cactus fruit, cactus fig, Indian fig or tuna (in Spanish) — is edible, although it has to be peeled carefully to remove the small spines on the outer skin. Indian Fig Opuntia might have a reducing effect on alcohol hangovers by inhibiting the production of inflammatory mediators. Some studies have witnessed significant reductions in nausea, dry mouth and loss of appetite, as well as less risk of a severe hangover. In any event, the gel-like sap of prickly pears can be used as hair conditioner.

Prickly Pear is also used as the intoxicant that produces the hangover in the first place, in dyes, and in plaster and stucco. The native varieties we planted are just a few inches tall, so watch your step!

Inside the circle of rocks in our front yard is our bed of scree and the common names of what we’ve planted so far are: Yarrow, Sweet Sage, Harebell, Sundrops, Fragile Prickly Pear, Eastern Prickly Pear, Hairy Beardtongue, Little Bluestem, Purple Love Grass, Nodding Wild Onion, Butterfly Milkweed, Prairie Smoke, Rough Blazing Star and Hairy Mountain Mint.

We will keep you informed on our progress.

A scree garden is what I think every garden should be: ecologically sensible, beautiful and without the backbreaking work.

Try a wee spot of scree in your yard.

Water Wise

Winter is usually about snow and ice but, as our climate warms, all our seasons will increasingly be about water.

Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

Those lines from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge describe a possible future for us since the United Nations Development Program reports that there is no longer any unpolluted water on earth.

While it looks like we are in the midst of abundance, we are really in the midst of scarcity.

Steven Solomon, in his book Water, puts it well:

“Only 2.5% of Earth’s water is fresh. But two-thirds of that is locked away from our use in ice caps and glaciers. All but a few drops of the remaining one-third is also inaccessible, or prohibitively expensive to extract, because it lies in rocky, underground aquifers — in effect, isolated underground lakes — many a half mile or more deep inside Earth's bowels. In all, less than 0.3% of total freshwater is in liquid form on the surface.”

An article titled Economics And Technical Change: The Water Resource Conundrum, published by Environment Canada, states, “The average Canadian per capita water use from municipal systems is 350 litres per day, second only to that of the U.S., and over double that of many European countries. Also, of the water pumped in many Canadian municipalities, less that 75% can be accounted for by deliveries to customers. Water use inside the home is excessive. The typical toilet uses 20 litres per flush, and showers use twice the water required for effectiveness.”

One billion of our fellow earthlings, many living in the areas indicated on the map below (http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/water-scarcity-index), have access to five litres of water per day or less, so let’s put our water consumption in their terms.

Activity	Water allowance of 5 litres/day for:
Brush your teeth with a running tap	3.5 people
Flush your toilet	1-6 people
Leaky faucet	8 people
Dishwasher, one cycle	8-11 people
Ten-minute shower	30 people
Take a bath	25-35 people
Wash your clothes	40 people
Wash your car	80 people
Water your lawn for one hour	260 people
Daily use of Tiger Woods Golf Course, Dubai	3,200,000 people

So fix that leaky faucet, and is it really worth the water allowance of 80 people for you to impress your neighbours with a clean car?

The Utilities Kingston Residential Flat Rate for monthly water use is $36.38, so the wise use of water is not so much about saving money as it is about saving water. Their website has some great tips for conserving water in the home, watering tips for lawns and gardens, useful links and information on their rain barrel program at http://www.utilitieskingston.com/Water/Conservation/.

Tips for Conserving Water In and Around Your Home

Toilets (33%of indoor water use)

Those 25-litre guzzlers are wasteful and unnecessary when one billion people have only five litres of water per day.

• Low-flow toilets use only 6 L per flush.
• Ultra low-flow toilets use 4 L per flush or less.
• Checking for leaks can save 1400 L per month.

Baths & Showers (25% of indoor water use)

• Low-flow showerheads save 8 L per minute.
• Shorter showers help conserve water.
• Filling the bath only half full saves 80 L or more per bath.
• Putting a stopper in the tub before starting the water saves 20L per bath.

Washing Machines (24% of indoor use)

• Full loads and shorter cycles save 95 L per load.
• Front loaders use 1/3 to 1/2 as much water as top loaders.
• Washing clothes only when dirty (not every day for teen jeans) reduces the loads.

Faucets (12% of indoor use)

• Turning the faucet off when it is not needed can save 10-40 L per day.
• Installing a flow restrictor or a faucet aerator can save up to 20 L per day.
• Checking for leaks can save 48 L per day (2 L per hour).

Dishwashers (6% of indoor use)

• Full loads on a shorter cycle save 28 L per load.
• Dishwashing by hand and rinsing in a dishpan can save 32-60 L per load.

Lawn/Garden Care (75% of outdoor use)

• Water your lawn only when it needs it. An hour of sprinkling uses 1,300 L of water and since no more than 2.5 cm can be absorbed, watering for longer is no benefit to your lawn. By changing from three hours of watering to one hour, 2,600L of water can be saved.
• Walkways and driveways usually don’t need watering. With the correct positioning of your sprinkler, you can save 10-35 L per minute.
• Choose drought-tolerant plants, less water is required and savings can be 10-35 L per minute.
• A hose with the water running uses 23L/minute; by using a spring-loaded nozzle you can save up to 16 L per minute.
• Water in the cooler parts of the day, so less water is lost to evaporation.
• If you aerate, weed and apply compost to your lawn, less water will be required.

Other Outdoor Water Usage

• Use a bucket of soapy water to wash your car and use the hose only for rinsing. The hose uses 23 L per minute and using a bucket can help you save at least 46 L of water.
• Use a broom, not a hose, to clean driveways and sidewalks.
• Use water toys and outdoor “kiddy” pools to cool off, instead of the sprinkler. A sprinkler uses 1,300 L per hour, so the savings can be astounding.

Although most water-saving measures come from simple changes in our behaviour, some require the latest technology. So, where do you get low-flush toilets, low-flow showerheads, flow restrictors and other useful gadgets in Kingston? They are widely available because most hardware stores, building centres, and plumbing fixture and supply centres carry a full line.

Another great program by Utilities Kingston is their promotion of rain barrels every spring. Rain barrels help protect the environment by reducing the amount of treated lake water used for watering plants and lawns, and diverting significant quantities of rainwater from the sewer system during storms, which reduces overflows. They help conserve energy by reducing the amount of water and waste water that needs to be treated and pumped throughout the city.

Rainwater contains minerals that make it healthier for plants than treated tap water. Finally, rain barrels save you money by lowering your monthly water consumption and reducing the volume of water that the City must build treatment infrastructure to handle.

Watch for the program announcement in the spring. Orders are limited to one barrel per household. Rain barrels will cost $35 including tax, and this charge will be added to your Utilities Kingston bill upon delivery.

We can survive without many things, but water isn’t one of them. Saving water is not only easy, it’s essential, because living next to a big lake makes us think we have far more clean fresh water than we really do

2010 A Year in Review

In my last post I talked about how wasteful we are of our water and said that, in this post, I would cover the many ways to re-fit your home and your behaviour to save our precious water. Well, I'm not. I'd like to put that off for one more post because, as winter approaches, it seems like a good time to report on the performance of our earth-sheltered house over the last year.

Site

We have germination on our roof, probably not great news for most people, but very satisfying for us. Our nurse crop of oats has sprouted over creeping red fescue to hold the three feet of soil in place over the winter on both sides of our curving stone roof path that runs over the kitchen, hallway, study, and guest room. Planted here and there to spread over the next few years are a dozen varieties of native perennials such as Coreopsis, Coneflower, Butterfly Milkweed, and Yarrow. We will add a few more but generally are letting nature fill in with the hardiest plants for our rooftop meadow.

Out front, three multi-tonne rocks anchor a welcoming gateway and a wall of stone gathered from the site during construction. Inside the stone wall is a scree garden, 60 cm of #2 road gravel, into which are planted Little Bluestem native grass, Prickly Pear cactus, Harebell and six other varieties also native to this part of Ontario. Here, the purpose is a nearly maintenance-free front garden with hardy perennials that need no watering or weeding.

The deciduous trees did their job to perfection, allowing warming sunlight in during the winter and shading the above-ground part of the house during the summer.

Of course, the river was a constant companion. We ate many meals on the shoreside deck and wore out several inner tubes shooting down among the rocks on hot summer days.

Heating and Cooling

We were very relieved to have the underground concept do its job, too. Not that we had many doubts, but it is always nice to see an unusual idea work out the way it's supposed to. In the winter we were warm and snug, and actually ran out of propane for the in-floor heating during construction and didn't notice it for two days as the underground temperature remained constant.

The bedroom stayed cool all summer and it was just as pleasant as we had hoped to be lulled to sleep by the sounds of the flowing river.

The Trombe window provided a significant amount of heat throughout the winter on sunny days as the stone wall behind the glass was heated then slowly released that heat after sundown. We did, though, have to replace the single panes in the Trombe window with sheets of double-glazed, low-e, argon-filled glass to eliminate the waterfall of interior condensation. Tucking a flannel sheet along the bottom of the window every night and hanging it to dry in the mechanical room every day quickly lost its pioneer appeal. But it was great to feel the warmth of the sun flood in on sunny days, not enough to heat the entire two-story section but a very good supplement.

The rest of the heating in this part of the house came from a woodstove with in-floor hydronic as a backup. There is nothing as comforting as the heat from a woodstove, or as handy when you come in from outside with cold hands. Standing next to a forced-air register just doesn't do the job. Since we are harvesting wood only from this site, and have enough firewood for several years from the trees removed during construction and leftover lumber, we expect to be carbon neutral in wood.

Interior

The interior beamwork worked even better than we had hoped. Being surrounded by 300-year old wood does have a grounding effect and we are so happy to be able to mix the newest design with some of the oldest materials.

We chose cork floors because cork trees are peeled every seven years to make them, and no trees are cut. Cork is renewable, a bit soft, and warm from the infloor heating but, boy do the 3 m panels ever expand lengthwise in the summer humidity. We had one long run the whole length of the house, about 26 m in length that swelled so much it looked like a skateboard track. One bump 20 cm high was a definite safety hazard, we had to place buckets of rocks here and there to make it flat enough to walk over without tripping and it took three visits from the installers to finally corral it.

Water and Sewage

The Waterloo Biofilter® is working very well, delivering biologically-cleaned water to the small drainfield that we surrounded by stumps pulled from the site. We have had many adventures with hard water and a water heater that sounded like a giant popcorn popper, but that, too, is a post for another day when we have it sorted out.

All and all, we can't believe our good fortune in how well the house functions and we remind ourselves every day not to take it for granted.

Water

The Salmon River is low this time of year, so water seems even more precious. When we think of resources, we usually take water for granted. But what seems like abundance is really a scarce resource that we depend on for the foundation of all life on Earth.

Steven Solomon, in his book Water, puts it well:

"Only 0.025 of Earth's water is fresh. But two-thirds of that is locked away from our use in ice caps and glaciers. All but a few drops of the remaining one-third is also inaccessible, or prohibitively expensive to extract, because it lies in rocky, underground aquifers - in effect, isolated underground lakes - many a half mile or more deep inside Earth's bowels. In all, less than 0.003 of total freshwater is in liquid form on the surface."

Unfortunately, much of that liquid water, even on the Earth's surface, is hard to reach.

As Solomon states, "Some societies have been built around the edges of lakes, which hold some 40 times more water than rivers. Yet lake water has been a far less useful direct resource to large civilizations because its accessible perimeters are so much smaller than riversides. Moreover, many are located in inhospitable frozen regions or mountain highlands, and three-fourths are concentrated in just three lake systems: Siberia's remote, deep Lake Baikal, North America's Great Lakes, and East Africa's mountainous rift lakes, chiefly Tanganyika and Nyasa. One of the most striking facts about the world's freshwater is that the most widely accessed source by societies throughout history-rivers and streams-hold just 0.00006 of the total."

We are lucky to be surrounded by water-Lake Ontario on the south and many lakes and streams on the west, north, and east. We think that this is true for everyone, but it is not. The distribution of water on Earth is wildly unequal. One-third of all streamflow occurs in Brazil, Russia, Canada, and the United States, with a combined one-tenth of the world's population. Semiarid lands with one-third of the world's population, by contrast, get just 8 per cent of renewable supply.

We should remember that when we hose off our driveways and water our lawns on sunny days (which wastes 90% of the water through evaporation). Canadians are terrible wasters of water. The United Nations calculates that 60-80 litres per day are needed for drinking, sanitation, food preparation, and bathing. Canadians manage to use more than four times that amount.

An article titled Economics And Technical Change: The Water Resource Conundrum, published by Environment Canada states, "The average Canadian per capita water use from municipal systems is 350 liters per day, second only to that of the U.S., and over double that of many European countries. Also, of the water pumped in many Canadian municipalities, less that 75% can be accounted for by deliveries to customers. Water use inside the home is excessive. The typical toilet uses 20 liters per flush, and showers use over double the amount of water required for effectiveness."

However, individual Canadians should not be singled out for blame. Dan Shrubsole and Dianne Draper in On Guard for Thee? Water (Ab)uses and Management in Canada, state, "Agriculture is the #1 consumer of water, with only 25% of the water it withdraws being returned to its source. Over 85% of agricultural withdrawals of water are for irrigation, and 15% are for watering livestock.

Then there is recreation. Municipal golf courses use more water than municipalities. There are also hidden uses of water, and the amount needed to produce common foods and clothing will astound you. The average bathtub without you in it holds about 200 litres of water.

According to Waterfootprint.org (http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/productgallery), a kilogram of roasted coffee takes 105 bathtubs to grow and process. A kilogram of beef takes 775 bathtubs of water to produce. That cotton shirt in your closet takes 135 bathtubs. A bottle of wine takes 36 bathtubs.

It adds up fast.

It's clear that we can use much less water with technology and by making a few simple changes. Baths take 100 litres of water, showers with water-saving showerheads, about 30 litres. Toilets need 4-6 litres per flush, not 20 litres. Turning the tap off while you are brushing your teeth will save 700 litres a month.

We hear a lot about the oil crisis but the water crisis is next, even here, living beside Lake Ontario. Remember, you can survive without oil; you can't survive without water.

Next time, I will explore many ways to re-fit your home and your behaviour to save our precious water.