Earth Week Challenge 2020: Water Wednesday

Day 3 of the Earth Week Challenge is "Water Wednesday." Today's challenge is to "Become mindful about your relationship with water. Learn about local water issues and how you can protect your access to clean water."

Well, I could just argue that I've already done that, dust off my hands, and move on. But the email I received goes on to suggest several more specific and concrete tasks to complete:

1. Find at least three ways to conserve water in your home or daily habits.
If they're asking me to name three ways I already conserve water in my home or daily habits, I could do that without breaking a sweat (which would also save water). I've already written 25 posts here about my water-use habits, including one Money Crashers article specifically on ways to reduce water use at home. But if they're asking for three new ways to save water that I haven't adopted already, I'm not sure I could manage that. At this point, I've already harvested all the low-hanging fruit: washing full loads of laundry, using a water-saving shower head, using drought-tolerant plants in my yard, and so on. The only things left are either prohibitively difficult or expensive (like installing a greywater tank) or simply unacceptable to me, like holding my showers to a three-minute limit. I don't have many extravagant habits, but I like to take my time washing my hair and shaving my legs.

2. COVID-19 water challenge: Save water while washing your hands, turning the faucet off while you lather your hands for 20 seconds.​
I'd already tried this, and as far as I can tell, it did no good. After taking 20 seconds to lather up my hands without the water running, I just had to spend another 20 seconds rinsing off all that soap. The process ended up taking twice as long and using just as much water.

3. Meditate on how you are thankful for having clean water. 
I've done this before, not in any really focused way, but every time a news story happens across my path about places that are struggling with water shortages or pollution. I can take a few seconds now to express my gratitude, once again, that I can drink water straight out of my tap and don't have to shell out ludicrous amounts of money (and consume ludicrous amounts of packaging) for bottled water, but it doesn't make me any more aware of the problem than I was yesterday.

There was also a "bonus task" created by Audubon Florida, which involves writing a story about the Everglades for a specific audience, but this was a lot more time-consuming than the others, and I couldn't see how it would directly help anyone. So I've set that one aside to revisit when I have a little more time to spare.

So, all in all, I didn't do much of anything differently for Water Wednesday than I would on any other Wednesday. I did wash one very full load of laundry, but that was because we hadn't done it for over a week and I was nearly out of socks; I did take a shower, because I had skipped it yesterday; and I washed my hands the same way I've been doing ever since the COVID outbreak started. The only specific action I took in honor of the challenge was to try to mimic Brian's low-water washing method when cleaning up the lunch dishes. But I probably didn't manage to keep my water use quite as low as he did.