ILACSD Debuts Zero Waste Workshops

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Emily Nelson, Education Manager

Thanks to the generous support of the City of Encinitas and Healthy Day Partners, I Love A Clean San Diego is currently providing free adult workshops as part of our Sustainable Living Series. After a successful kick-off in November, we’re looking forward to our upcoming workshops in January and February. Read on to learn more!

As a San Diego native, I’ve always taken pride in how our community members rally together during a time of need. Most recently, San Diegans responded impressively to our drought crisis. Between June and August of this year, San Diego county residents decreased their water usage by 27%. We’ve all worked together to take shorter showers and limit our irrigation frequency, but is there more we could be doing?

10.7.15 - SLS (33)At our first Sustainable Living Series workshop – What to Know about H2O – I Love A Clean San Diego staff set out to tackle that very question. After reviewing the history of water in San Diego, participants rolled up their sleeves and dug into our repurposed planter activity. Using items salvaged from Goodwill as pots, we planted succulents, saving water and saving items from the landfill in one fell swoop.

Following a tour of the Ocean Knoll Farm, the site of the Sustainable Living Series workshops, our educators discussed the benefits of selecting native plants as part of your outdoor landscape design. We demonstrated water-wise irrigation options, exploring the benefits of backyard rain barrels and detailing the process of installing a Laundry to Landscape greywater system. Our youngest participants got to “bling their bucket” with reminders of how to conserve water in their home.

Thanks to generous donations from Walter Andersen Nursery in Point Loma and Home Depot in Encinitas, we raffled off a rain barrel and 10 native plants, among other items. Everyone walked away with something to set them on the path to living more a more sustainable life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce0_SXGPUvk]

Join us for our upcoming zero waste workshops: Zero Waste Home on Saturday January 9th and Zero Waste Lifestyle on February 20th, offered at no cost to you!  

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Click the image to register!

Visit www.cleansd.org/e_community.php for more information and to register.

 

Water Savings in Action

Last month, I Love A Clean San Diego and Media Arts Center San Diego came together to create a short but educational video to help San Diegans conserve water. Here’s a behind the scenes look at our video shoot!

DSC00017I Love A Clean San Diego’s Board President, Eric, is a water saving pro, so it was only fitting that we used his home as a backdrop for our video. He and his family have made all sorts of changes – some small, some large – to make their home more water wise.

When we pulled up, we were in awe of his front yard. He recently removed all of his grass and shrubs, replacing it with mulch, wood chips and lots of drought tolerant plants. It looked professionally done, so of course we were in shock when he said that he did it all himself! He showed us how the mulch ground cover helps to retain moisture in the soil, so he rarely waters but the ground still felt damp and cool.

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Whether you have 1 rain barrel or 5, you will be making the most out of the few rainy days San Diego sees each year.

Then we headed to the side of his house, where he showed off his massive rain barrel array. I have to say, it was a little intimidating to see such a feat of engineering, but he assured us that it’s really easy after you do a little math. To help with this, we’ve put together a DIY guide to plan for and install rain barrels at your home!

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Low flow shower heads and faucet aerators can make a huge impact!

After checking out Eric’s amazing vegetable garden, which he irrigates with water collected from his rain barrels, we headed inside the house! One clever tactic that we’d never even thought of is to fill up a large bottle with water and put it inside your toilets water tank to help displace water. Then, the toilet tank thinks that it is full and shuts off before using too much water. 

Another quick and easy bathroom water savings retrofit…low flow shower heads and faucet aerators. They are simple to install and the water savings can really add up. And best of all? I Love A Clean San Diego has lots of them available through a partnership with San Diego Gas & Electric. If you are an SDG&E customer, you can swing by our office to pick up your free water savings kit! Or, you can request one online and they’ll mail it to your home!

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Displacing the water in your toilet tank allows it to use far less water with each flush.

We finished the day by taking a tour of his garage. You might not think that a garage has anything to do with water conservation, but it does if that’s where you do your laundry. Eric’s family has installed a gray water system in the garage to collect water from the washing machine to irrigate shrubs on the side of his house. This installation is a bit more technical, since you have to create a two-way valve and find a way to run PVC pipe through your garage and out to the yard. But, the good news is that in San Diego, you no longer need a permit to install gray water systems, as long as it is only hooked up to your washing machine. For more water savings tips for every room of your home click here and if you’re interested in learning more about rebates, we have an infographic for that too!

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Gray water, commonly referred to as Landry to Landscape is another great option to make the most out of every drop.

Now that you’ve gone behind the scenes, here is the final product – our water conservation video!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5_OV2TVvok]