Winnipeggers challenging others to cut water consumption

How much water do you use in a day?

According to Statistics Canada, the average Manitoban uses 306 litres of water each day, that’s more than 600 water bottles.

Winnipegger Kevin Freedman challenges himself every March to only use 25 litres daily, that’s cutting the consumption by 90 per cent.

“A lot of people are unaware of their water use, not necessarily by fault of their own, we don’t have a mechanism to see how much water we use,” he said.

Freedman said though cutting water use is challenging, it’s become a routine over the last decade.

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“I traveled a lot and I had to shower with buckets and sponges in the past and I had to wash my own laundry by hand and I knew how to use a lot less water,” he said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I traveled a lot and I had to shower with buckets and sponges in the past and I had to wash my own laundry by hand and I knew how to use a lot less water," he said.

Across the country, consumption breaks down to 35 per cent between showers and baths, 30 per cent from toilets, 20 per cent from laundry, 10 for drinking and in the kitchen and five per cent to cleaning.

The Manitoba Eco-Network’s Executive Director Duncan Stokes said there are easy things people can do to reduce their use.

“I think a lot of times when you try it on the short term and you commit to it on the short term it’s not as hard work and it’s not as hard to build into your routine as you thought it might be,” he said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I think a lot of times when you try it on the short term and you commit to it on the short term it's not as hard work and it's not as hard to build into your routine as you thought it might be," he said.

Stokes recommends not using water bottles, to making sure your dishwasher and laundry machines are full before you turn them on and to swap out old shower heads for low flow alternatives.

Freedman said even if you can’t cut your consumption to 25 litres, he challenges people to cut their use by that much.

“Going down to 25 litres is daunting but reducing by 25 is not that hard,” he said. “If you can do three minutes less in the shower you’ve saved 25 litres of water.”