Water-Use Reflection

My family's average monthly water use for the past six months is 14.48 cubic meters per month. We live in an apartment, and the national average for apartments in Singapore is 17.2 cubic meters per month. That means my family is 3.28 cubic meters under the average, which computes to 19% lower than the average household uses.

There are five people living in my house. After I worked out the calculations, I found that each member of the house uses about 96.5 liters of water every day. Again, this is much lower than the national average. The average Singaporean uses about 114 liters of water per day. My 96.5 liters is only what I use at home. I also use water at school and when I'm out of my house other places in Singapore. I might need to look at ways to reduce my consumption and have a smaller water footprint on our planet.

If I could convince my family to help me, I think we could reduce our water use by at least 25%. This would put us at 10.86 cubic meters, even lower below the national average. My ultimate goal is to reduce our usage by 10% the first month, an additional 10% the second month and another 5% in the third month. After that we will try to make small reductions or simply stay at that level.  The graph below shows my family's water usage for the past six months (blue), our average (green) and my "targets" for the next three months (red).

I've identified a five-point plan for my family. Every time we reach our target we will have a eat out somewhere. Here's the plan:

1. Don't run water while brushing teeth, shaving, washing dishes.
2. Collect unused water to water house plants.
3. Only do full loads of laundry.
4. Install water-efficient shower heads in showers.
5. Install flow restrictors in faucets.