1. Less water is evaporating when the water goes to the Great Salt Lake than the water that is evaporating when you water your lawn.

Watering your lawn is way worse for the environment then not using the water. They are NOT the equivilant. You can perform an experiment if you want. Use a spray bottle to spray out 20 squirts into the air (upward) and let the water fall onto a cloth. Then squirt the same amount into a cup by putting the nozzle against the cup. Watch which one evaporates first. I promise that the sprayed one will. This is for the same reasons I mentioned before. The surface area of sprayed drops and the surface area of a water that is rushing down a stream are very different. In addition there is more air flow over the sprinkler-sprayed water than a stream. Even less air flows over the stored water underground.

2. As the water from spring run-off goes to the Great Salt Lake, not all of it goes there. Some of it replenishes stores underground, and some of it helps to support ecosystems on the way out there. Remember the words to “Give said the little stream”? When we’re watering only our own yards we are saying “Take only for my own family”.

3. The Great Salt Lake is an ecosystem that is almost unique in the world. It supports life and is valuable on it’s own. Read “Refuge” by Terry Tempest Williams if you want. It’s a beautiful book and might help you appreciate that area.

4. All the water you use in the Salt Lake Valley or anywhere that is developed in UT does not come from spring run-off. There is not enough water-fall each year to support the number of people who water lawns there.

Still– my family had a yard and I loved having a place to play. I’m just saying, reduce the amount that you use by watering early in the AM and realize that all of it has a cost to the environment. When I was a kid, it didn’t matter too much if the lawn was really green. It mattered more that I could run on it. Dry patches were pretty normal and that was ok for playing purposes. I think the adults care more about the green-ness of the lawn because of what it looks like to the neighbors.

I believe all of my municipal water comes from run-off, a renewable resource. If that’s the case, then it shouldn’t matter, from an environmental perspective, if the water evaporates from my yard or upstream in the Great Salt Lake. In fact, it would seem to me that the greatest waste of our fresh mountain runoff is allowing it to evaporate in the desert (Great Salt Lake) rather than water a CO2-consuming tree or lawn.

Why isn’t watering the desert (allowing good water to run into the Great Salt Lake) the environmental equivalent of leaving the hose on at Saltair? There would be environmental benefits to the rivers themselves, but the moment the water hits the lake, that looks to me like waste.

Fluorescent bulb disposal- They definitely have Hg in them and shouldn’t be chucked into the normal garbage. I’m sure that if you call up the garbage pickup company for your area, they can tell you what to do.

We had a hard time recycling in Provo (no curbside pickup- well, there is, but it’s $5 a month and doesn’t go into the student neighborhoods anyway) until we realized that you don’t have to go to the recycling center every week… duh. We just keep old cans in a box until we get sick of them and take it out every few months. So it’s not much of an extra workload.

I gave up my 3.5 HP giant green Lawn Boy last year, for a Sears push reel mower. I get exercise without wasting gas and oil and I think my sweat is less environmentally damaging than the exhaust (at least on a global scale, no guarantees if you get too close).

Here in the Northwest, the compact fluorescent bulbs (twisty ones) really do save a huge amount, plus the power company gives you credits if you are consuming less power. Otherwise, our power bill (which is too big anyway) would be a budget buster. We can recycle them at several permanent locations in the area, plus Redmond City does a quarterly recycling event where you can drop them off with lots of other recyclables.

If water follows it’s course, it is usually under ground or other water and consequently, not much is exposed to air. It is also cooler, so not much evaporates. It doesn’t need to go through the “purification” process for us. The purification is a little harmful to the earth by itself.

If you use it to water your lawn and take long showers, way way more evaporates. The greatest evaporation happens where water is exposed to air. So if you’re watering your lawn, each little drop has lots of surface area from which to evaporate AND it has air flow over the sides of it which makes it even evaporate faster. If you’re taking a hot shower or washing clothes and dishes in running hot water, more evaporates because you’re heating it. In that case, you’re also using burning fuel to heat the water.

So no– using water yourself and letting it follow it’s natural course are not at all equivilant.

There really isn’t enough water coming down each year to make all of the lawns in the Salt Lake valley green. So to deal with that, water is taken from stores that would not otherwise evaporate as easily.

If giving up a green lawn is a little too much right now for the kids, you can set your sprinklers to water in the wee hours of the morning (when it isn’t as hot) and water for a shorter period of time. You get more green lawn per drop that way. You can also turn the water off in the shower while you’re soaping and shampooing and just keep the water on for rinsing before and after the suds.

I love this post. I love the earth. Here are another few things that maybe everyone already does, but if not,

May 17 is ride your bike to work day!

Our toilets only use 1.6 gallons per flush (says so right on them). I figure that’s already pretty minimal, so we don’t put jars in the tank.

spectator-my bulbs still haven’t run out yet, so I have no idea what to do with them. I’ll find out.

Like I said, I have no idea how much difference it makes, but it gives me purpose, and I s’pose if everyone did it, it would change things.

smb, creeping thyme sounds cool. are you doing it in the front or back?