What are your best tips for saving water?

“Heck yeah!” said some of the team. “Our water bills slam us over summer when the garden dries up…” Yet with other staff the response was more muted. “Meh,” mumbled others with a shrug. “We water the garden heaps, and the bills don’t really bother us.”

The variety of opinions was strange. No one could agree on the facts. It even threatened to turn into one of those big issues that get a ‘-gate’ after their name – except it would have just been ‘Water-gate’, which only confused us more – until the boss solved the mystery.

“Crikey!” he said. “I just got our new water bill, and what’s with these new charges?”

It turns out that everyone had previously been billed at different rates under different councils, but under the new Auckland ‘Super-City’ water rates had been standardised into one bill to rule them all – with some nasty price hikes for some.

Suddenly we were all back on the same page – when you’re paying through the nose for a resource, it underlines how important it is to save it. And now, after weeks without rain, and with people throwing around the ‘d’ word, saving water seems to be on everyone’s mind.

That probably explains the popularity of a post on the Green Ideas Facebook page: Waiheke Island has been hit very hard by the drought – and lots of clever advice is being passed around their community on how to survive with virtually no water. One friendly Waihetian (as the island dwellers are known) compiled the best ideas and sent them in to us, and they immediately flashed around Facebook and Twitter.

So if you’re one of those Kiwis who care about saving water, we’ve reposted the tips for you – check them out here, and please add any new ideas of your own to the list.

Be warned though, those Waihetians are a robust bunch and their advice pulls no punches… they learned the ‘let it mellow’ trick years back.

Greg Roughan
Editor, Green Ideas magazine

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