Maybe it’s better called the “billion gallon challenge” — but whatever name you give it, it’s an initiative I’m proud to be helping to launch at Greenbuild 2009 in Phoenix. And, I learned something I didn’t yet know in the process — I love it when my clients teach me something new!
RehydrateUS is an initiative created by Tommy Linstroth, sustainability guru over at Melaver, Inc. Tommy heads up the firm’s sustainability consulting and oversees all of their own LEED project development and management, so he’s pretty savvy about what we need to do as a nation to conserve water. And because he is so amazed that the solution could be so simple, he’s created this challenge: switch out your outdated, low efficiency TOILETS, SHOWERHEADS and FAUCET AERATORS. That’s it. If everybody did it, we’d save 1 billion gallons of water EVERY DAY.
Oh, and what did I learn from Tommy? Turns out it takes about 1 kilowatt hour of energy to use 1 gallon of water — so if we save 1 billion gallons of water, we’re also going to save about 1 billion kilowatt hours of energy … I think that’s where the BOLDly simple comes in.
Get yourself over to www.rehydrateus.com and calculate your potential water savings and then sign up and pledge to get ‘er done.