How to Conserve Water | National Geographic

Today, I'm in Colorado, a state that can see more snow than Alaska. Standing here in the banks of this frozen reservoir, it's easy to understand why water seems like a limitless resource. But the fact is, in the United States, we could face a national water shortage in a little more than 50 years.

Colorado needs to save every drop it gets, and Colorado College, which has been ranked first for water conservation among 280 colleges and universities, is leading the way. Our water largely comes from the other side of the continental divide. We're bringing it through tunnels that are miles long through the mountains into reservoirs and then either into rivers or pipelines. That's something that a lot of our students have never actually thought about before. So, how are you managing water here?

We've reduced water usage by 38 percent, which is a pretty big drop. I think it's the biggest in the country, actually. There are multiple different ways: the fixtures, low flow shower heads, and in our residence halls, and toilets. Things that aren't shiny, flashy, or exciting, but you know, as we add all of those together, they start to have a really big impact. And then just efficiencies. You know, there's a lot of technical projects that we've done. One of the projects that saved a lot of water is the cooling system for our central heating plant. We closed the loop on that, and that saved us about three million gallons of water a year.

There are many lessons we can learn from Colorado College. I'm here in the college's eco-home with a family of students who are learning more about being water wise. Talk to me a little bit about Synergy, your relationship to water here. At Synergy, we do use gray water when we shower. We have like a five-gallon bucket below us that we kind of just let fill up while we're showering, and then we use that to flush the toilet. So, about half of our indoor water use is spent in bathrooms, with showers as the major drain.

On average, American families use more than 300 gallons of water every day. [Laughter] And many of us still rinse our dirty dishes under a running faucet before loading them into the dishwasher. This is a huge waste of water because you actually need the dishes to be dirty, as the enzymes and the detergent latch onto food particles to work effectively. It's these actions that could help avert America's looming water crisis, giving the next generation a better chance of never having to see a water shortage.