Did you know that less than one percent of the world’s freshwater is available for human use?  Even though the world is made up of largely water, only three percent of it is fresh and most of the fresh water is frozen at the polar ice caps.  With such a small supply of water available for our growing demand, it makes sense that the Environmental Protection Agency and other environmental groups are constantly calling for conservation and reusing whatever we can to stretch our thin water supplies.  In the summertime the average water usage per day jumps by about a hundred gallons for the average person.

Local governments are responding to their water supply shortages in different ways.  Some are implementing higher rates for those who use the most water.  Others have enacted restrictions over water usage, such as not watering your lawn between certain hours or on certain days.  There are many simple steps you can take to reduce your water footprint in your local area.

Hoses are a huge source of wasted water so instead of using your hose to wash your car consider using two buckets, one filled with soapy water and one with rinse.  If you can, pull your car onto your lawn to wash it.  “This has two great benefits: you can water the grass or flowerbeds at the same time, and the soap and road residues percolate through the ground instead of running into the sewer where they negatively impact aquatic ecosystems.”  Any leftover water that you have can be used to water plants around your house.  Or if you prefer professional car washes, try to find one that recycles their water.

Two of the best ways to reduce water use from your garden, whatever you’re growing, are to use rain water barrels to capture the water from rooftops over the winter, and to mulch your beds – with straw, leaves, grass or even rocks and gravel. These two factors alone could eliminate almost all your municipal water use in the garden.

For lawns, grow grasses that are suitable for the temperature and moisture levels in your area and don’t cut it too short, keeping it a little longer will help the soil retain moisture. You might also consider pulling up part of the lawn and replacing it with low maintenance garden beds, or some food plants, or easy care ground covers like short growing clovers, yarrow, or various hedges. You can even dot in a few well-mulched strawberry plants or pots of blueberries for a sweet and attractive treat.

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Even one-drop-at-a-time oil spills on roads and parking lots from vehicles are enough to pollute the environment significantly. The oil spilled on the driveway, parking lots, or gas stations, not only look unsightly, but according to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, they also contribute to an estimated 80 percent of marine pollution.

When an oil spill occurs at home, most people use oil spill cleanup techniques, such as hot water pressure washing, pour paint thinner, use kitty litter, soapy water and other granular absorbents and solvents. But, the fact is that most of the techniques that you use for oil spill cleanup are not environmentally safe and cause more harm than the oil spill itself.

Even though washing down oil spills quickly removes driveway oil stains, it still leaves the driveway slippery and also proves to be harmful to the environment in the long run. Washing off oil spills results in oil being flushed into the ditches or storm sewers, which ultimately end up in streams or lakes polluting them and causing great harm to humans as well as to the wildlife.

Similarly, when you use toxic chemicals, such as detergents or dispersants on an oil spill, they break up the oil into small droplets, which dissolve for some time, but again reform and float on the water surface creating additional problems.

Gas stations often use kitty litter or other granular absorbents for oil spill cleanup. These granular absorbents soak up all the oil rather than biodegrade it. And, when the oil kitty litter is swept up and disposed off, it ends up in a land fill resulting in an environmental hazard.

On the whole, the solvents and absorbents that we use for oil spill cleanup are also harmful pollutants. Bioremediation is the only method that cleans up oil spill in an eco-friendly manner. Bioremediation is the process where the harmful hydrocarbons present in the oil are broken down into nontoxic substances by attracting the microbes present in the atmosphere. So, always make use of oil spill cleaners that make use of this technology.

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Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/environment-articles/harmful-effects-of-environmentally-unsafe-solvents-and-absorbents-1497495.html

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