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When it comes to greening our home, I’m pretty limited. I have good intentions, but we rent an apartment, so I'm not in a place where I can replace appliances, add solar panels, or change anything about the heating system. (Although I think it's pretty green that we live in the smallest apartment we could find—right?) I keep the air conditioning off as often as possible, but most of my efforts are concentrated around saving water.
We've already talked about the shameful amounts of water I waste doing dishes, but my apartment has another conservation culprit: our bathroom sink. For some reason the sink has two faucets—one hot and one cold—instead of one central faucet that would give us warm water. But the real problem is the hot faucet, which leaks—a lot. No matter how hard we turn it off before going to bed, by the morning it has freed itself enough to let a steady stream of water run down the drain.
I'm no plumber, so I call my dad, who has fixed his share of leaky faucets. He walks me through an outline of taking apart a faucet to change a washer—it sounds doable, but my apartment building has a maintenance guy who, I'm guessing, is slightly more qualified than I am. I email my landlord but I'm out of luck for this week: he's on vacation. So in the meantime, I've been checking every hour to keep it as dripless as possible—and looking into getting a conservation-friendly showerhead to balance it out.
More about water waste:
Stop Those Leaky Faucets, Put Cash in Your Pocket
A New Era of Water Conservation
Water: A Billion Gallons a Month Down the Drain
Ten Tips for a Green Home
More about green apartment living:
Third Annual Coolest Small Apartment Contest
How to Green Your Rental
Buy the Book!
Ready, Set, Green: Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-Living
Blythe Copeland is a freelancer writer living on Long Island. Read more about her foray into the green life in her previous columns as she follows the plan set out in the book Ready, Set, Green: Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-Living.
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