Reduce Your Water Bill To Almost Nothing

I am always on the search for ways to save money and the environment. Some of the things I find about being green cost just too much money for me to try or recommend. Today I may have found something from Sustainablog. Alex mentions a news story about a Texan woman reducing her water bill to $15.

Reducing the water bill to that much is pretty impressive, especially in Texas. For me, I live in one of the rainiest places in the country, Forks, WA. This city receives over 100 inches of rainfall a year. So having a rooftop rainfall catching system would seem like a good idea. I have just one little problem, I rent. Now although our water bill is usually pretty low, there is always something to do to make it lower.

There a few sites about rainwater harvesting though and they both have quite a bit of information about how to concoct a system of your own. I do not suggest buying a system as going to the hardware store will most likely be cheaper. Here are the two sites...

Harvest H2O
Rainwater Harvesting Guide

This rainwater collection gets me thinking about another way to reuse water. Except this system will take the water you use in your faucets, shower, and appliances (excluding the toilet), filtering the water, and watering your garden and plants through an irrigation system. This called Greywater (grey water, graywater, or gray water). There are a few sites you can do research on including this site and the infamous Greywater.com.

I will posting about greywater irrigation systems in the future as there is a lot of information to digest and comprehend. I took a geosciences class in college and we talked about these systems, the professor actually built one in his yard, and it isn't hard, but it takes a lot of work and planning. There are also some legal problems with it so you might want to check out this Gray Water Policy Center. Check in the next week or so for a post about gray water and the benefits for you.

Google In The Water

The people that look outside the box are generally successful. Google is a prime example. They have hired numerous people that think differently then the general population. I mean they have quite a few business ventures including Google Chrome (a web browser that I have been using since it was released) and even the Google phone (a phone which is supposed to compete with the Iphone). But the thing most people use every day is their search engine.

Google's search engine will be taking a ride out to sea. They have planned to put shipping containers full of data centers on a barge and anchor them out in the water. The part of this that makes it green is the fact that these data center barge's will be powered by the moving water and/or waves, at least this is the plan. As of right now it's just a plan but will hopefully happen soon.