Leaks inside your toilet can waste up to 200 gallons of water per day!

• Toilet leaks are hard to find. They are normally caused by a bad flapper valve, flapper valve seat, a bad ballcock valve, and improperly positioned float arm, or a defective overflow tube.

• Test the toilet by dropping a dye tablet (or 1 drop of food coloring) into the tank. DO NOT FLUSH. Leave 15–20 minutes. If color appears in the bowl then you have a leak and repairs must be made.

A dripping faucet can waste 20 gallons a day.

• Faucet leaks are easy to detect. If it drips, or worse, continues to keep running after you shut if off, it needs to be fixed. If the dripping water is hot, it is costing you to heat the water.

• Water dripping or running from the shower head when the shower is turned firmly off is usually caused by bad washers or seats in the valve. These washers and seats need to be replaced. Also, check for leaks from the tub spout when the tub shower is on. This leak will reduce the performance of a low flow shower head because of reduced pressure to the head and waste water through the spout.

REPAIRS:

Problems with plumbing fixtures may be due to old age and corrosion or wear and tear. Replacement or repair parts can be purchased at a local hardware store. You can make the repairs yourself or consult a plumber. If you need more information, visit them online at: www.ims-awwa.org

Popularity: 5% [?]

Going green: Coca-Cola was the 1st company to have a recycled plastic beverage bottle.

The garbage each person in the United States makes in a year weighs about as much as a soccer team.

Americans throw away enough paper every year to build a wall 12 feet high all the way across the United States.

The biggest polluter of our air is motor vehicles.

Most of the energy used in our homes is for heating.

The ecosystem is a community of animals and plants interacting in the place they live.

Popularity: 29% [?]

It is up to you whether Pickens Plan is the right thing for our country. Your decision on whether there is Global Warning.  One thing is for sure, America is dependent on foreign oil.  Are there options to eliminate this dependency? There are many plans and ideas for what the problem is versus what we should do about them.  Fantastic!  We have acknowledged there is an issue (regardless of the actual “issue”) and now what are we going to do about?

Read the plan and then you decide.  Here is an excerpt from the website:TV spot

The Pickens Plan.

There are several pillars to the Pickens Plan:

• Create millions of new jobs by building out the capacity to generate up to 22 percent of our electricity from wind. And adding to that with additional solar generation capacity;
• Building a 21st century backbone electrical transmission grid;
• Providing incentives for homeowners and the owners of commercial buildings to upgrade their insulation and other energy saving options; and
• Using America’s natural gas to replace imported oil as a transportation fuel in addition to its other uses in power generation, chemicals, etc.

Popularity: 46% [?]

• Don’t accept an extra paper or plastic bag in stores if you’re only going to throw it away. Many stores have plastic bag recycling programs. Bring back plastic bags to the store that offers recycling. You can always purchase reusable bags. Most grocery and department stores sell reusable bags close to the checkout counters or if they do not offer reusable bags, ask the cashier or even the manager.

• Write on both sides of paper; use recycled paper products when you can. The recycled paper products will usually be identified on the front of the packaging or on the back. Many stores offer printer paper, greeting cards, food packaging, stationery, notebooks, as well as other items on recycled paper.
• Buy drinks in returnable bottles whenever possible. Some places do not offer returnable bottles, if they do, return the items to be reused.

• If you enjoy purchasing a cold beverage in a store, you might reach into the cooler and pull your favorite beverage in a plastic bottle. What if you thought for one second the alternatives to that plastic bottle.  You could choose a plastic cup and fill it with a fountain drink instead. This cup can be reused many times and, in most cases, refills are typically more inexpensive than bottled beverages. Reusing items helps with reducing the waste it creates and then these same items can be recycled.

• Avoid buying over-packaged goods. Manufacturers are catching on to reduce the amount of packaging on some items. Various products are now sold in more compact containers. Some are even sold in bulk, therefore, more potential to reduce packaging.

Unfortunately, the goals of package designers are opposite of the goals of waste managers. Packagers want containers that won’t burn, break, crush, degrade, or dissolve, while these are the features waste managers do not want.

Popularity: 63% [?]

These days, it’s hard to get the kids off the couch with the Internet and video games to contend with, let alone get the whole family together for a group project. However, if you are so inclined to give it a shot and get your family to connect on something around the home that will do everyone some good, why not start a family garden?

There are several benefits to having a garden, and when you add the whole family, it becomes extra special. You can teach your children a little bit about nature, the current condition of the planet, the rewarding feeling of growing your own food, and save money at the same time!

Growing your own food in the yard with the family can also be a great way to bond and get together on a regular basis. You can all share in the reward of the delicious first dinner that was made with fresh fruits and vegetables that came from the garden you all grew together.  Make sure to take pictures to make the memory that much greater.

Here are a few tips to get started on your first family garden:

• Prepare and plan
  The biggest reason that people don’t have a garden is that they don’t understand what’s involved or know where to start. Get everyone in the family involved, read up a bit on gardening and plan out the start date on a weekend when the whole family is available for a few hours.  If you would like to start small, consider an egg carton with seeds and soil.  This is a great one for kids to do.

• Outdoor Planters We wanted to make a green decision and I knew I had a few 5 Gallon Buckets laying in storage.  A hammer and a nail were very easy to make draining holes in bottom of the bucket.  We painted the outside and top 1/3 of the bucket.  Fill bucket 3/4 full of soil and planted zucchini plants.  Decorating the outside of the buckets is your choice.  Make it a solid color to blend the colors or have a your kids color.

• Decide what you will eat
  Choosing what it is you want to grow can depend on the time of year you are starting the garden and what the climate is like in your area. However, you still should have plenty to choose from. Go to a local greenhouse and ask any questions you might have in regards to soil, time of year, or best items to plant.

• The garden tour
  Be sure to take your kids through a quick daily tour of the family garden so they can watch nature at work as well as feel the rewarding sense of accomplishment as their food pushes through the soil. Make sure to recruit the kids to water the plants and to assist in tending the garden, regardless how small.  It will be a great reward for everyone.

Popularity: 88% [?]

For many of us, the fact that we live far from landfills is a blessing, but it also often means that it’s easy for us to forget the massive problem that exists with the heaping piles of waste that plague our environment. When you and your family decide to make it a priority to recycle, you are making a commitment that does a great service to our Earth and all life that inhabits it.

There are so many products that we all use on a daily basis that are not environmentally friendly in the slightest. When you see a pop can lying in a ditch, that can is there forever until someone decides to pick it up and recycle it into something reusable. Otherwise it will end up in the humongous piles of waste in landfills and sit there indefinitely because it is not biodegradable.

Recycling is one of the the most important parts of our attempt to clean up the mess we’ve made. It will work if we all work together and participate.

How to start recycling as a family:

The amount of recycling products available to buy is growing and could really make a big impact if we all helped out by recycling all materials that can be.

Your family can start simply by having separate bins for your recyclable items and either putting them out at the right time weekly when your city’s sanitation department is scheduled for pick up in your area and/or bring items to your local recycling service.

Typically, cardboard is to be bundled together and the same with newspaper. Also, bottles and cans are to be separated and put together. Breaking down all the cardboard boxes you use (even product packaging) will also help a great deal. Typically those are the general rules, but consult your local sanitation dept. for literature on specifics for your area.

To make it an easier job on everyone and get the family involved, why not give each members a job to do and you can all meet in the living room on that night once the chores are finished and share a snack together. maybe make it movie night that starts after the recycling is done?

Really, there’s no reason that we all can’t help to recycle and reuse in order to help improve the environment and attempt to clean up the mess we made.

Popularity: 63% [?]