Sure, water is essential for human survival. But, did you know that only 1% of Earth’s water is usable? Yes. That’s why it makes perfect sense to be mindful of how you use water in your kitchen. Here’s how:
Invest in a Low-Flow Faucet
The best kitchen faucet should help you control how much water you use. Your kitchen accounts for about 20% of the water consumed in your entire household.
Of course, the water point in your kitchen the faucet, so you need to do some research on a particular faucet’s water flow before spending your money on it.
Older faucets, for instance, offer a flow rate of 5 gallons per minute while their new, state of the art counterparts reduce that to a reasonable 1.5 gallons. In other words, you will save up to 3.5 liters every minute with newer faucet models.
Clean Your Veggies and Fruits in a Bowl or Sink
Make it a habit of cleaning your produce in a sink or bowl full of water as opposed to a running tap. And the beauty of it is that you can use the water for your indoor plants or outdoor garden.
Note – you’re likely to waste up to 4 gallons of water every minute if you use running faucets to clean your vegetables and fruits.
Take Care of the Leaks
Don’t leave your faucets or taps dripping. While you may want to ignore it, a drippy faucet can waste a lot of water. Look at it this way – it only requires 15,000 drips to fill a gallon. So, if your faucet leaks at a rate of five drips per minute, it means that 173 gallons of water will have gone down the drain by the end of the year.
Defrost Your Food in the Microwave or Fridge
Indeed, you can defrost your food items by running cold water over them. Undeniably, it doing so will give the results that you want but, don’t you think that it’s wasteful?
Consider defrosting your food in the refrigerator a day or two before. Or, if using a fridge to defrost is too long for you to wait, you can always opt for a microwave.
Even then, it is crucial to keep in mind that you should never thaw your food at room temperature, in the sun or with warm water – it can lead to contamination and by extension, food-borne disease.
Make Use of a Dishwasher
Did you know that it may require up to 20 gallons of water to hand-wash your utensils and cutlery to perfection? Compare that to 4.5 gallons (or less) when using a dishwasher.
The only thing that you will need to do is to make sure that your washer is full. That way, you will save even more water.
Cook One-pot Dishes
You don’t want to spend hours in the kitchen preparing meals, do you? In fact, the more time you use to make your meals, the more water you will require.
Consider going the one-pot meal way because it makes prepping your meals super easy. On top of that, you won’t have as many dishes to cleans, which means less water.
And, there isn’t a shortage of meals you can prepare using this technique. Some of them include pizza, roast, lasagna, pasta and casserole to name but a few.
Don’t Boil Your Food, Steam It
One, you will use less water if you steam your food. Two, steaming helps preserve more nutrients in your off. Plus, you don’t require a special appliance to steam.
In fact, all you need to have is a steamer basket, or an insert that you can use in a pot. Don’t forget to let the water cool off after steaming so you can reuse it for your plants and garden.
Reuse Your Cooking Water
Okay, it not always that you’ll want to steam your food. Besides, not all foods are “steamable”, so to speak. But, when you boil your meals, you can still come up with ways to use the water you used to cook your food.
Drain the water in a bowl, cool it and reuse it to make bread, boil other foods, water plants, and cook rice.
The Bottom Line
While these aren’t the only ways you can use to save water in the kitchen, they are some of the most efficient. Others include using smaller pots for boiling and drinking tap water instead of bottled water.
Consider refrigerating a pitcher of water as opposed to chilling it too. That way, you don’t have to let your faucet to run as you wait for the water to get cold.
Also, if you’re hand-washing in your double sink, be sure to plug one side. The idea here is to use that basin for rinse water instead of running your faucet.