WaterSense, a voluntary public-private partnership program sponsored by the EPA, seeks to help homeowners and businesses improve water efficiency and reduce their costs by promoting efficient irrigation technologies. According to research by WaterSense, about thirty percent of water used daily by the average American family is devoted to outdoor uses. This water is used for a variety of tasks, such as watering lawns and gardens, washing automobiles, maintaining swimming pools, and cleaning sidewalks and driveways. This accounts for almost one-third of residential water use nationwide, which is estimated to be more than seven-billion gallons of water per day, or 2,555-billions gallons of water annually.
However, not all this water is used efficiently. More than 50% of commercial and residential irrigation water is wasted through evaporation, run off, and useless over-watering. An inefficient irrigation system can waste an immense amount of water and money every month. There are certain ways to reduce the water wasted through landscaping needs. For example, a family could use a weather-based irrigation scheduler/controller. On a moderate sized yard, this can reduce a household’s outdoor water use by about 15 percent, saving up to 37 gallons of water every day because it would provide the right amount of water to your plants automatically. Another way to save water through landscaping is creating a rain garden. A rain garden transforms your yard to collect and drain rainwater in a way where it keeps the ground wet during hot weather. Families can also invest in a rain barrel to keep plants watered. Additionally, using the drip irrigation system is a way to ensure that water used on plants/crops goes directly to the rooms of the plants and nothing is lost to evaporation or run off.
As you can see there are easy ways families can preserve their beautiful landscape while conserving water and helping the environment.
Sources:
Water, Use It Wisely: “CO-FRIENDLY LANDSCAPING TIPS TO HELP YOU SAVE WATER”
A really interesting article! I had no idea that there was that much water waste within landscaping sphere. I knew that there must be wasted water, but that figure of seven billion gallons of water nationwide per day was staggering. Its interesting to see how easy it would be for homeowners to reduce their wasted water by simply adjusting how their plants receive water. Definitely a question that could be researched farther.
Water waste in landscaping is a huge problem. Over irrigation for cosmetic reasons is a very pertinent subject right now. Especially since many of the chemicals that are used in landscaping like miracleGro and pesticides contaminate the groundwater. We need to figure out better ways for the landscaping industry to serve its clients.