Living Like Ed - (Page 46) some other water-collection system. That way, you can use rainwater when you need additional irrigation for your plants, instead of turning on the hose or the sprinklers. (We’ll go into more detail about water-wise gardening in Chapter 5, “In the Garden and Kitchen.”) Take Care of Your Toilets Another way to save water around your home is to replace old toilets. In 1989 I replaced every toilet in the house with a low-flush toilet. Some older toilets use as much as 6 gallons of water per flush. The new low-flow toilets use just 1.6 gallons. In Los Angeles, city code mandates that every new toilet installed must be a low-flush model. That really makes a difference. And here’s another habit worth breaking: Don’t use your toilet as a wastebasket. Why would you waste water to dispose of something that can go into an actual wastebasket or go into the compost pile or go into a recycling bin? You also can check pretty easily to see if your toilet has a leak. You just put a little food coloring or a special leak detector in the toilet tank. If that leak detector makes its way down from the tank into the toilet bowl and the water in the bowl turns Fix a Leaky Toilet that color, you know you’ve got a COST: $5 and up leak—and that means you’re wasting water. living like Ed 46 Nontoxic Paint I’ve been using nontoxic paint for years, since I first moved into this house. Whenever I bought paint, I sought out the least toxic stuff available. That was a challenge in the early ’90s, and even in the mid- to late ’90s, it was not that easy to find earth-friendly paints. Fortunately, it’s gotten a little bit easier. There’s a nice selection of stuff that won’t harm the environment and that also goes on smoothly and provides good coverage. In Southern California, paints are required by law to windows by doing something simple, like caulking or installing weather stripping, you’ll see a
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