Following on from yesterday’s watery post, green blogger Crunchy Chicken has proposed a “Dry Humps” (as in camels) challenge for one weekend next month. She states that the average American individual uses between 100 – 176 gallons of water a day, whereas an average *family* in an African country only uses 5 gallons of water.

The Crunchy one’s challenge is for people to cut down to 5 gallons a day (per person) for the weekend of the 12th & 13th June. Five gallons is 22.7ltrs, and as a guide, an average bath tub holds about 40gallons/150ltrs, and each toilet flush uses between 1.6gallons/6ltrs and 3.4gallons/13ltrs depending on whether it’s a new-fangled or old fashioned sort. So five gallons/22.7ltrs, per day, per person for a weekend really isn’t that much to live on – so quite an extreme challenge for us decadent water wasters, particularly at the height of summer.

A number of people who are taking up the challenge have wondered aloud how they’ll do it and another set of people have said the challenge is too extreme for them but they’d like to cut down their water usage over permanently – so I thought it might be a fun idea to brainstorm some dark green super tips – or bright green water saving gadgets or ideas.

We – the people switched on enough to read green websites – all know we should turn off the tap when we’re cleaning our teeth and to fill our washing machines rather than running them on water-wasting half loads. They’re the equivalent of “put on a jumper before turning on the heating” ideas for reducing heating bills/usage. But what are your favourite water saving hints and suggestions?

Do you have any gadgets to reduce water flow? Has a pay-for-what-you-use water meter helped keep you focused?

Do you use grey water (from baths, showers, washing machines etc) or stored rainwater to do anything fun? Have you hooked up any systems to automatically do that?

What about in the garden? It’s getting warm out there now and I don’t know about you but my veggies are gulping it down already. Do you do anything in particular to make sure you’re using what you need but not being wasteful?

And what about in the workplace? Have you encouraged your colleagues to cut down? Or seen any great water saving ideas in industry?

Any other ideas?

Here’s this week’s awesome reducing, reusing & recycling links round-up:

• These leather scrap mushrooms are a great idea for using up scraps & leftover material from bigger leathercraft projects – or recycling bits of leather from old clothes/accessories.
• Kris of Resweater pointed out a very easy tip to extend the life of children’s plastic summer toys & games – tidy them away to reduce the plastic’s sun exposure.
• Friend of Recycle This Alison Bailey Smith emailed to tell us about an art show starting today in Birkenhead on the Wirral (in the north west of England). On display is art made by the local community and professional artists (like Alison) from recycled materials.
• Abbie posted on Simple Green Frugal about how difficult it is to find non-plastic sippy cups — and how an old glass jar can be transformed into a plastic-free(ish) alternative.
• Mrs Green of My Zero Waste is urging us all to take action and improve tetra-pak recycling in our local areas.
• Craftzine linked to this great tutorial for a paper ball garland – a party decorating alternative to the now ubiquitous bunting. Ok, this isn’t a reuse as it is but the scrap paper could easily be used instead of specially bought craft paper – security envelopes would be low-key fun or colourful catalogues/magazines for something brighter.
• Mademoiselle Chaos showed us how she turned an old blown-out umbrella into chunky yarn.

We’ve had an email from Linda:

i want to use the water from my hot tub on the garden, it is a great waste to just put it down the drain. the water has chlorine in it.

if i drain the water into water butts, is there any way i can remove the chlorine from it to make it safe to water my garden?

This isn’t something I know a lot about – I know people use filters to remove the chlorine from tap water but that’s in a lot lower and smaller quantities than a hot tub.

So anyone with more watery experience got any ideas?

(Photo by allygirl520)

We’ve recently had some shelves fitted in an alcove – only to realise afterwards that a door handle will bang into the central upright. (We’d already done lots of tweaking to make it accommodate the door, just apparently not that bit!) To save damaging the upright, we’ve dropped our cute doggie front door doorstop into the gap to act as a buffer but that’s needed at the front door so I need another one.

I love the idea of fabric and rice filled cute doorstops like SwirlyArt Lyndsey’s Cheeky Chickens – but I wondered if anyone else had any other suggestions – particularly water-proof suggestions since between the cats, the dog and our clumsiness, it will surely end up drenched in some liquid or another! (sorry for the ugh!)

Coming at the door from the other side, has anyone got any fun ideas for a wedge – more interesting than just the usual triangle of wood?

So after the chicken killing on Friday night, we spent Saturday playing with pig guts. It was an unusual weekend.

We were playing with hog parts because we were on a sausage making course at Old Sleningford Farm in North Yorkshire. It was a very interesting and fun course in a lovely location – I’d heartily recommend it to any sausage fans or just people wanting to try a new skill. Rachel & Martin, who run the course, are lovely – keeping us delightfully fed and watered the whole time we were mincing meat then squishing it into “casings”.

Rachel & Martin recently moved to using “ready spooled” casings for their sausages – they cost a little more but save a whole lot of time because they come “spooled” on narrow plastic tubes rather than in loose hanks (imagine how knotted hanks of yarn can get, how awkward it is to unravel them sometimes; now imagine that with pig guts instead of yarn). At one point during our group making 25kg of sausages, there were a number of the spools on the table – and Martin wondered aloud how they could be reused or recycled. Like a pork spattered recycling superhero, I suggested that I might know a friendly internet community who could come up with some ideas… :)

They’re about 30cm (1ft) and the hog casing ones are just over 1cm (half an inch) in diameter. I realise, like with chicken feathers, these aren’t something everyone will have to reuse/recycle – but any suggestions?

I guess suggestions of particularly relevance to small scale sausage producers/smallholders/foodies would be best as they’re the ones most likely to have the tubes in the first place.