Eco-Friendly Friday

For the second installment of my "Green Your Home" series I thought we could focus on the Bathroom.  The biggest impact of the bathroom is through water waste and there are many simple yet effective ways to combat that waste.  I would hope that if your reading this blog you already use cloth towels instead of the disposable type! Other ways to green your bathroom you might not think about are:

• Add a water saving aerator to sink faucets.
• Consider changing your shower head to a WaterSense version, really not as expensive as you might think and easy to do on your own.
• Change the flapper in your toilet to a low-flow alternative, again cheap and easy to install on your own...I've done three myself!
• Make sure you fix any leaking faucets.
• Take short showers and turn the water off while soaping up.  There are some shower heads that even allow you to turn the flow into a dribble so you don't get a cold water shock when you turn it back on.
• Turn the water off while your brushing your teeth.
• Use eco-friendly cleaning products.
• Make sure the lights/fan are out when the bathroom is not in use.
• Females - you could use reusable feminine care products like the Diva Cup or cloth pads.
• You could even subscribe to the notion "If it's yellow let it mellow...if it's brown flush it down."

Our biggest issue is needing to run the faucets for a long time while waiting for hot water to arrive.  There are several different systems on the market now for instant hot water heaters that can be installed along the pipes.  We would love to do that (especially for our Kitchen sink where it takes forever to get hot water) but that is a higher cost fix that we simply can't afford at the present moment. 

I'm sure there are other ways to green your bathroom...so what do you do?