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Whether you’re cooking noodles, peeling potatoes, washing the dishes, or brewing a coffee, the kitchen is a major consumer of water.

Keeping conscious about our water when we’re cooking, cleaning, washing, and drinking can help send less down the kitchen sink.

• Install taps with a high WELS rating
• Turn the tap off when washing vegetables – fill the basin or a container with a little water instead.
• Scrape any food scraps into your green food scraps bin, and try to avoid garbage disposal units where possible as they use about 6 litres of water per day.
• Reuse water from food preparation to water the garden.
• Store drinking water in a bottle or jug in the fridge rather than waiting for the tap to cool.
• When washing dishes by hand use washing liquid sparingly to save on rinsing.
• Make sure to put the plug in the sink, this saves running the tap continuously.
• When washing dishes by hand, don’t rinse them under a running tap. If you have two sinks, fill the second one with rinsing water. If you have only one sink, stack washed dishes in a dish rack and rinse them with a pan of hot water.
• When boiling vegetables, use enough water to cover them and keep the lid on the saucepan. Your vegetables will boil quicker, and it will save you water, power, and preserve precious vitamins in the food.
• Flow-controlled aerators for taps are inexpensive and can reduce water flow by 50%.

Dishwashers

• Install a modern water efficient dishwasher with a high WELS rating.
• Only use the dishwasher when you have a full load.
• Use the rinse-hold setting on the dishwasher, if it has one, rather than rinsing dishes under the tap first.

Waiting for warmer water

• Catch running water while waiting for it to warm up. Use it to water plants, rinse dishes, or wash fruit and vegetables.
• Insulate hot water pipes. This avoids wasting water while waiting for hot water to flow through, and saves energy.
• Make sure your hot water system thermostat is not set too high, a common recommendation is around 60 degrees Celsius. Adding cold water to cool very hot water is wasteful.
• New hot water systems allow you to specify the temperature without adding cold water.
• Install a plumbing device that allows the cold water to be recirculated until it warms up.