The City Of Cape Town has created a clever website that calculates how much water you use and then can adjust your usage accordingly to save more water.
The City of Cape Town has launched a website that helps people in Cape Town or travelling to Cape Town to calculate how much water they use. Having this information allows one to reassess their usage and adjust accordingly to adhere to the limited water allowance per person in Cape Town.
The water calculator has multiple tabs which need to be filled in, from shower times to toilet flushes as well as brushing teeth and cooking.
We (here in Joburg) tried the calculator and after 1 six-minute shower, two toilet flushes, 1 sink of washing dishes and 1 face and hand wash we hit red! That was a pretty sobering thought! We hadn’t even input our teeth brushing habits, cooking, drinking water or pets water.
The calculator estimates that a six-minute shower uses 60 litres, two toilet flushes is 18 litres, one sink of dishes is 9 litres and washing your hands is 3 litres. That goes over the 87 liters allowed per person. We would have to switch our shower down to two-minutes and brush our teeth while in the shower, flush with the water collected from the shower and the sink of dishes and just hope that cooking doesn’t require any water.
You can use the calculator here to work out how much water you use.
The government asks that people do the following:
- Cut your water use to less than 87 litres, per person, per day
- Use municipal drinking water only for essential washing, cooking and drinking purposes, and only use indoors
- Check and fix all leaks on your property
- Start limiting household usage to 10,5 kilolitres per month (Level 6 restrictions from 1 January 2018)
How would you change your habits to accommodate the 87 litres per person?
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