As the world shifts towards a more sustainable future, it’s important to find those slight adjustments you can make in your own home to reduce waste and minimise your family’s environmental impact. Saving water is a great place to start, but before you start taking 45-second showers, consider an alternative that reduces your whole home’s water wastage in one go: Complete Home Filtration.
How can improving the quality of your water help the environment? Here are five ways filtering your home can help you live more sustainably – as well as being better for your skin, your hair, and your wallet!
1. Eliminating Plastic Bottles
When you have filtered water running through your home, you can get bottled-quality water any time you want. Plastic bottles are a huge contributor to pollution, both at the beginning and end of their life cycle.
The plastic itself is made of petroleum, transported in high-fuel trucks and often wrapped in even more plastic. Then, even if you plan to recycle the bottle, there’s a good chance it will end up in landfill anyway; less than 40% of Australia’s recyclable plastic bottles actually end up being processed and turned into new materials, with most ending up in dumps or scattered as environmental pollution.
By filtering your home, you can cut down on plastic without having to sacrifice the taste or quality of your water.
2. Reducing Water Waste
Ironically, the better your water is, the less you’ll need to use. Filtered, softened water is much more effective for cleaning, often dealing with stains and messes without even needing soap. Spots will come off cars more quickly, and dishes won’t need to be rinsed as thoroughly.
Softened water also eliminates certain cleaning tasks altogether. If you live in an area like WA or SA that has quite hard water with high mineral levels, a big part of cleaning kitchens and bathrooms is scrubbing away chalky limescale residue.
This is one of the biggest advantages of filtering your whole home rather than a single tap; if you have softened water coming out of every tap and shower head, your kitchen and bathroom will do half the cleaning for you!
3. Cutting Down on Chemicals
Wasted water going down the drain isn’t great, but it’s much worse when that water is carrying harsh chemicals into our waterways. Heavy-duty cleaning chemicals can cause significant damage to aquatic ecosystems and contaminate our water basin, and gentler soaps and detergents can be just as harmful in large quantities.
Softened water significantly reduces your reliance on these chemicals. Soaps and detergents lather more effectively in soft water, making them more effective in smaller doses. Eliminating limescale and iron stains from hard water also cuts out a whole category of cleaning products.
Additionally, just like bottled water, these chemicals are wrapped in plastic that often gets discarded. Most cleaning products come in plastic tubs or bottles, so by making each bottle last longer, you will be reducing your home’s plastic consumption even further.
4. Saving on Skin & Hair Care
Even if you clean your shower several times a week, there’s something else you’re probably cleaning in there more often – yourself! The same benefits that reduce your soap and detergent usage also apply to shampoo, conditioner and other hair/skin products.
Since the products work in smaller doses, each bottle lasts longer, saving both money and plastic. Additionally, since you’re using smaller quantities, you’ll be reducing the amount of chemical runoff from your home – and the amount of chemicals you’re rubbing into your skin and hair (read more about why that matters here).
Chlorine-free showers also help reduce the need for these kinds of products. Chlorine may be an effective disinfectant, but it also dries out your skin and strips the healthy oils from your hair, making it more brittle and susceptible to damage. Filtering your shower makes the whole process simpler, cheaper and healthier.
5. Improving the Efficiency and Lifespan of Appliances
When we think of areas where we can make our homes more sustainable, we typically picture cutting out things like single-use plastics or leaving the tap running while we brush our teeth. However, there are also more subtle kinds of waste coming from your home.
Hard water can be a major contributor to both higher power consumption and shorter lifespans for appliances. When limescale builds up in hot water systems, their power efficiency drops significantly. The same happens when calcium starts coating the insides of kettles and coffee machines; any water-using systems or appliances will be slowed down and worn out by hard water.
Throwing out a plastic bottle every now and then may have a minimal impact, but sending a kettle to landfill every couple of years because limescale gutted its lifespan will certainly add up.
Water affects almost every aspect of our lives, and it can be very difficult to keep track of each effect individually. Filtering your whole home takes the complexity and confusion out of conserving water, making sure you get the maximum benefit from every drop.
If you’d like to learn more about filtering your home with Australia’s most awarded water filter company, send us a message below or fill out our contact form to book a free water consultation.
