Water central | Water Storage-book | Water testing-download | Wild water wisdom-article | Water Conservation Central | Fecal coliform counts | Stormwater | Rainwater harvesting | Slow sand filters

Water Conservation Central: How to Save Water — Without Wasting Other Resources

Reduce, reuse, recycle...in that order. Reducing water use—conservation—is generally more beneficial than reusing it, and is thus the first priority.

This page serves as an index to the large amount of water conservation and water conservation related resources on oasisdesign.net.

Integrated Design

A common mistake is to take a narrow view to water conservation, and end up wasting energy to save water, or wasting materials to save water and energy.

As always, the best results are obtained with an integrated, context-specific design; one that takes every consideration into account, and is custom-tailored to the circumstance.

More:

ultra high efficiency toiletUltra high efficiency fixtures

Always consider efficient fixtures before looking to reuse water from them:

Composting toilets

Composting toilets conserve water by not using water:

Greywater systems

Greywater systems conserve water, energy, and chemicals, as well as reducing nutrient pollution and extending septic system life, by reusing washwater for irrigation. While not a major factor on its own, optimized greywater reuse is a like the indicator species for the whole ecosystem of home water and resource management; ultra high efficiency fixtures, a culture of conservation, landscaping that provides shade, privacy and fruit; intelligent management of mulchable, compostable and burnable material, rooftop rainwater harvesting, stormwater harvesting, etc.

More:

Edible landscaping

Edible landscaping conserves water by using greywater or other irrigation to grow healthy food right outside the home. Growing vegetables and fruit with greywater avoids the use of water in agricultural areas, like California's Central Valley or the overdrawn Delta, and prevents ecological costs associated with transporting that produce to the home:

Rainwater harvesting and runoff management

Harvesting rooftop rainwater helps conserve water by substituting rainwater for other sources. Infiltrating all runoff saves some irrigation water, banks water in aquifers for a sunny day, and reduces flooding:

Water storage

Storage relieves pressure on water supplies by covering peaks in demand and smoothing out variations in supply.

Storage can also be used to:

The most ecological water supply relies:

More:Water Storage-book

Water conservation district resources

Oasis Design is a widely recognized provider of useful water conservation information. As a water conservation district or other government agency, linking to our information saves the considerable cost of developing, and the even larger cost of maintaining separate pamphlets or PDFs on the topics above (Our greywater book, for example, is in its 17th revision). We try to maintain our links stable over time. If you link your organization to our information resources, please  Email us  so we know you are relying on those pages.

If you are part of a government agency and you want to share our information with visitors to your web site, you are not alone. A few of the examples of government agencies who have linked to our information:

Suggested ways for agencies to use our information resources

1) Link to our water conservation resources if you haven't already—E.g., Santa Barbara, Marin, Santa Monica, Wyoming

2) Link to our greywater resources instead of developing your own—E.g., Wyoming

3) License our greywater resources to reprint under your logo—E.g., City of Santa Barbara, County of Santa Barbara

4) Buy our greywater info and use it internally—E.g., everybody

5) Buy our info and pass it out like showerheads—East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD), City of Santa Barbara, City of Goleta have bought our laundry to landscape DVDs by the master case and passed them out free to customers

6)  Email us suggestions to us for inclusion in future editions of our new books and web pages.

California Urban Water Conservation Council award

See also: