Since its founding in 2006 through 2011, the U.S. EPA WaterSense partnership has saved consumers $4.7 billion in water and energy bills.
Other 2011 WaterSense accomplishments include:
- 287 billion gallons of water saved since 2006—that’s enough water to supply all the homes in Georgia or Arizona for a year!
- WaterSense has helped reduce the amount of energy needed to heat, pump, and treat water by 38.4 billion kilowatt hours, enough to supply a year’s worth of power to more than 3.6 million homes.
- Eliminating 13 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions—the equivalent of planting nearly 350 million trees.
Do you own and use a WaterSense labeled product? If not, it’s worth taking a few minutes to check out the WaterSense website and learn how you could start saving water and money.
What is WaterSense?
WaterSense, founded in 2006, is a U.S. EPA partnership of government, businesses, organizations, communities, and individuals with a specific focus on water efficiency.
From the WaterSense website, “WaterSense brings together a variety of stakeholders to:
- Promote the value of water efficiency.
- Provide consumers with easy ways to save water, as both a label for products and an information resource to help people use water more efficiently.
- Encourage innovation in manufacturing.
- Decrease water use and reduce strain on water resources and infrastructure.”
The idea is to make it simple and easy for people to use less water by looking for, purchasing and using products and services bearing the WaterSense label.
The WaterSense label indicates a product or service is at least 20% more efficient than average products in the same category (e.g. showerheads) and performs the same or better.
The WaterSense Label
The WaterSense partnership establishes standards and specifications for water related products and services that may use the WaterSense label. At the writing of this post they include:
- Toilets
- Bathroom sink faucets
- Urinals
- New homes (built with WaterSense labeled products)
- Showerheads
- Weather-based irrigation controllers
- Professional service programs (landscape irrigation)
To utilize the WaterSense label, companies must:
- Make a product or service that meets WaterSense requirements.
- Obtain independent, third-party certification.
- Sign an agreement defining roles and responsibilities, use of the label, packaging, and marketing.
WaterSense is aptly named. Saving water and money makes sense. In our household, we decided to tackle showerheads, but that is a topic for another post.
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