Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the Summer issue of The WaterSense Current enewsletter.
WASHINGTON — With this summer’s London Olympic Games just around the corner, WaterSense is proud to announce Olympic-sized savings of its own. Since the program’s inception in 2006, WaterSense-labeled products have helped Americans save $4.7 billion in water and energy bills and 287 billion gallons of water. That amount of water could supply the entire city of Atlanta, the 1996 Summer Olympic Games host city, for more than eight years!
WaterSense labeled products have also saved 38.4 billion kilowatt hours of electricity since 2006 by reducing the amount of energy needed to heat, pump, and treat water. That’s the equivalent amount of electricity needed to power more than 3.6 million homes for a year. With this energy savings, WaterSense has helped eliminate 13 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions — the equivalent of planting nearly 350 million trees.
WaterSense owes this success to the more than 2,600 utility, government, nonprofit, manufacturer, retail, distributor, builder, and irrigation partners who have joined with EPA to help promote the WaterSense label and spread the word about the importance of water efficiency.
In the past year, WaterSense and its partners have helped the number of WaterSense labeled products, programs, and new homes grow by leaps and bounds. By the end of 2011, more than 4,500 models of toilets, faucets, showerheads, and flushing urinals had earned the WaterSense label.
In addition, WaterSense labeled new homes have been springing up around the country, with more than 120 new homes earning the WaterSense label by the end of 2011. Compared to a traditional home, a WaterSense labeled new home can save a family of four as much as 50,000 gallons of water per year and up to $600 annually on utility bills.
In 2011, WaterSense reached another milestone by adding weather-based irrigation controllers to the list of product types eligible to earn the WaterSense label — the first outdoor product to join the lineup. WaterSense also made progress on creating specifications for a number of other water-saving products in 2011. The program continued developing a specification for commercial pre-rinse spray valves by conducting testing with several laboratories and coordinating with stakeholder groups to develop efficiency and performance criteria. Additionally, WaterSense issued a notification of intent to consider modifying aspects of the WaterSense Single-Family New Home Specification and began research on soil moisture sensors and commercial building-type flushometer-valve toilets.
