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50 Easy Ways to Conserve Water

Whether your city is facing a drought or not, you can always think a little greener in the choices you make at home?and at work, especially when it comes to conserving water. It’s not an infinite resource, and those who have it in abundance tend to use it recklessly.

There are lots of creative ways to reduce your water usage and get it closer to the World Health Organization recommended 5 gallons per day, rather than the American average: 100 gallons. Here are 50 ideas to get you started.

  1. Only order water in a restaurant if you plan to drink it.
  2. Collect unused?shower water in a bucket.
  3. Use dirty?bathwater to water plants or flush the toilet.
  4. Use a broom, not a hose, to clean your sidewalk.
  5. If your shower fills a 1-gallon bucket in less than 20 seconds,?upgrade the head.
  6. Upgrade from water-cooled to air-cooled appliances.
  7. Compost vegetable scraps, rather than using the disposal.
  8. Decline automatic refills of water in restaurants.
  9. Pot plants in the fall when conditions are cooler and rainfall is plentiful.
  10. Like your water cold? Keep a pitcher in the fridge, rather than running the tap.
  11. Monitor your water bill. Spikes will alert you to leaks in the house.
  12. Unless your dishwasher requires it, don’t pre-rinse dishes.
  13. Cover your pool so water doesn’t evaporate needlessly.
  14. Soak pots and pans, rather than letting the water run.
  15. Reuse the water your dehumidifier collects.
  16. Don’t water your lawn on windy days.
  17. Locate your house’s master water shutoff valve in the case of flooding.
  18. Water your lawn when temperatures are cooler. Morning or evening is best!
  19. Wash fruit and veggies in a bowl of water, rather than in running water.
  20. Use this dirty water?to nurture?your houseplants!
  21. Check outdoor faucets, sprinklers and hoses for leaks.
  22. Purchase new appliances that offer cycle and load size adjustments.
  23. Shorten your shower by a minute.
  24. Shorten your shower by two minutes.
  25. Install a rain sensor on your irrigation controller.
  26. Know the water footprint of your food.
  27. Insulate hot water pipes.
  28. Decline unnecessary laundering in hotels.
  29. Cut your grass a little higher. A taller lawn shades roots and holds soil moisture.
  30. Cleaning out your fish tank? Give the?extra, nutrient-rich water to your plants.
  31. Apply organic mulch to plants. It retains moisture and saves water.
  32. Don’t let the water run while brushing your teeth.
  33. Fix leaks as soon as you discover them.
  34. Plug the tub the moment you start running water for a bath, then adjust.
  35. Only run full loads of laundry. This can save?up to 1,000 gallons per month!
  36. Load your dishwasher the right way.
  37. Save your drinking glass and use it throughout the day.
  38. Water small patches of greenery by hand, not with a hose.
  39. Check for soil moisture two inches below the surface before watering.
  40. Encourage your office to promote water conservation.
  41. Don’t flush the toilet unnecessarily.
  42. Wash dark clothes in cold water.
  43. Aerate your lawn at least once per year.
  44. Collect water from your roof in a rain barrel, then apply to the lawn.
  45. Wash your pets outdoors in areas of the lawn that need to be watered.
  46. Reuse your towels and washcloths when you stay in hotels.
  47. Turn the faucet off while you lather your hands with soap.
  48. Don’t flush things (like tissues) that can simply be thrown away.
  49. Post notes with reminders to save water around the house.
  50. Share these tips with your friends and neighbors!

You may have heard some of these tips before, but they certainly bear repeating. Others are a fresh take on applying dirty water to new uses, or taking the stingy route when it’s easier to take the convenient one. Remember: every little bit helps!

Related Stories:

11 Things You Should Never Flush Down the Toilet
10 Uses for Rainwater
10 Ways to Start Living Zero Waste

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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50 Easy Ways to Conserve Water

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Donald Trump Sure Does Love Autocrats

Mother Jones

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After the Cold War ended, US presidents largely stopped hosting visits from authoritarian leaders. But as in so many other things, Donald Trump yearns for the world of his youth, when the world’s bastards all got the royal treatment from the White House as long as they were our bastards. Here, as compiled by Jack Hasler and Yonatan Lupu, are the autocrat-hosting records of the past five presidents:

In only his first three months, Trump has already made good progress in returning to the realpolitik of the Cold War. Can he keep this up? Check back in three months and we’ll see how he’s doing.

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Donald Trump Sure Does Love Autocrats

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The Clinton campaign isn’t ready to take a stance on the Dakota Access pipeline.

A new study from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at UCSF indicates that women who choose to get abortions are actually quite certain in their decision. In fact, they report having less doubt than with other medical decisions, such as getting a mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 35 (!) states require medical providers to counsel a women seeking abortion, and 27 of those mandate a waiting period between the counseling and the procedure. These laws make up many of the freshest threats to abortion rights in the country.

Previous research has backed up the claim that these waiting periods are medically unnecessary, but this is the first of such studies to scientifically compare a woman’s certainty about getting an abortion to, say, finally getting that mole removed. (Check out the study here.)

“These laws presuppose that women are conflicted in their decision about abortion, but need additional time or information to make a decision,” lead author Lauren Ralph told us. “[Our research] directly challenges the narrative that decision-making about abortion is exceptional or different from other health decisions.”

The takeaway? Never assume women aren’t assured in their medical decision-making — it’s patronizing, scientifically inaccurate, and just not a good look.

Why are we writing about abortion? Click here to learn more.

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The Clinton campaign isn’t ready to take a stance on the Dakota Access pipeline.

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North Carolina is urging people to evacuate — days after Hurricane Matthew.

A new study from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at UCSF indicates that women who choose to get abortions are actually quite certain in their decision. In fact, they report having less doubt than with other medical decisions, such as getting a mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 35 (!) states require medical providers to counsel a women seeking abortion, and 27 of those mandate a waiting period between the counseling and the procedure. These laws make up many of the freshest threats to abortion rights in the country.

Previous research has backed up the claim that these waiting periods are medically unnecessary, but this is the first of such studies to scientifically compare a woman’s certainty about getting an abortion to, say, finally getting that mole removed. (Check out the study here.)

“These laws presuppose that women are conflicted in their decision about abortion, but need additional time or information to make a decision,” lead author Lauren Ralph told us. “[Our research] directly challenges the narrative that decision-making about abortion is exceptional or different from other health decisions.”

The takeaway? Never assume women aren’t assured in their medical decision-making — it’s patronizing, scientifically inaccurate, and just not a good look.

Why are we writing about abortion? Click here to learn more.

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North Carolina is urging people to evacuate — days after Hurricane Matthew.

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5 Simple Ways To Recycle Your Fresh Cut Flowers

Whether selectedfrom your own garden or purchased from a florist, there’s something undeniably beautiful about fresh cut flowers. Always the most perfect blooms, they bring color and a wonderful scent into our lives for a short time.

It’s that last partthe very short period of time they lastthat bothers me, though. It seems such a shame to spend all this time and energy growing flowers, just for a few days as a table arrangementor a bridal bouquet.

But maybe cut flowers don’t have to meet their fate so soon. Here are just a few ways that your special occasion flowers can be recycled, upcycled and repurposed to that their joy and beauty stick around as long as possible!

1. Donate Them

This is the simplest way to extend the life of your cut flowers, especiallyafter a wedding or similar large event where you have more arrangements/bouquets than you can give away to friends or family. Retirements homes, homeless shelters, nursing homes and even some independent restaurants are always happy to receive donations of fresh flowers to improve the appearance of their facilities. In fact, if you work out an arrangement with them beforehand, they may even come and pick them up!

2. Dry Them

If you’re looking to recyclea bouquet that had special meaning, you might not want to give them away, and that’s fine too. Drying flowers is a great way to enjoy their benefits long after the freshness has worn away. Properly dried flowers can be used to make your ownaromatherapy formulas, popurri blends and even edible embellishments! Check out this Care2 post on How To Dry Flowers And Botanicals to learn more.

3. Press Them

Pressing is a very particular style of drying flowers that allows them to be displayed or incorporated into handmade crafts. All it takes is a few blossoms that are still fairly fresh and a stack of heavy books! Check out this Care2 post on How To Make Beautiful Botanical Art With Pressed Flowers for an easy tutorial.

4. Preserve Them

Professionally arranged wedding bouquets aren’t cheap, so it’s always disheartening to think about tossing them in the trash a few days after the wedding. If you’re looking for a way to enjoy your bouquet indefinitely, you should know there are options, but they too will cost you a little bit.

“If you aim to have your bouquet preserved in its original shape,I suggest either silica-gel drying or freeze-drying, which are done by professional preservationists and will help keep the natural, three-dimensional shape of the flowers. The difference between the two methods is just technical: Silica-gel drying involves burying the flowers in a granular substance until theyre totally dry, while freeze-drying entails slowly dehydrating the blooms in a cold,vacuum-sealed machine. The bouquet is then sealed inside a glass container like a shadow box or a glass dome,” expert floristEric Buterbaughtold Martha Stewart Weddings.

5. Transform Them

If none of those options appeal to you, consider transforming your special bouquet or flower arrangement into something else altogether. There are several companies who specialize in turning flowers into beautiful beads that then become earrings, necklaces, bracelets that can be worn forever. Check out Blossoms Into Beads and My Flowers Forever Jewelry to learn more about this amazing upcycling process.

What’s your favorite way to make fresh cut flowers last a little bit longer? Share it in the comments!

Image Credit: Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Simple Ways To Recycle Your Fresh Cut Flowers

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Extreme heat? Check. Ice loss? Check. Any other records we can shatter?

Extreme heat? Check. Ice loss? Check. Any other records we can shatter?

By on Apr 20, 2016commentsShare

The world has been breaking climate records left and right. Here’s the short list:

2015 was by far the hottest year since record-keeping began in 1880, shattering the record we just set in 2014.
The first three months of 2016 have already reached new highs.
The past 11 months globally were the hottest in 137 years of records.
A record amount of the Arctic Ocean never froze this winter. And Greenland’s ice started melting at its earliest date yet.
Carbon levels in the atmosphere showed their biggest-ever annual jump last year, according to readings at NOAA’s Mauna Loa observatory.

El Niño is partly to blame for warmer-than-usual temperatures, but scientists say we wouldn’t be seeing this record-breaking streak if global warming weren’t also fueling extreme temperatures.

Looking over this list of dubious accomplishments, I wondered what climate records we haven’t shattered in the last few years. So I asked a handful of scientists what’s left to fall.

Hot, hot, hot

Though the globe as a whole has experienced record heat, there’s enough regional variation that plenty of local records remain, former White House science advisor and Woods Hole Research Center President Phil Duffy said. And extreme weather and “natural” disasters — record storms, drought, and heat waves, for instance — are bound to occur all over the map.

“The spot where record rains occur moves from one month and year to the next,” Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told me via email. “The same with wildfires. … If not where you are then somewhere not that far away, and your turn will come sooner or later.”

Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann wrote that “eventually we would expect that the all-time record for maximum daily temperature will be broken this decade or in the decades ahead in every city of the world. To date, this is only true for some percent of locations. Over time, that percent will approach 100 percent.”

Adios, ice

Scientists who study ice at the poles say there are still records standing in their field. “Some places haven’t warmed very much yet — Antarctica for instance — and so records there (in sea ice or temperature) are not falling at the same rate,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. (That’s not true in the Arctic, though, which has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world.)

And believe it or not,  there’s still a record from 1940 that we have shattered yet: That’s the year when ice broke up in Alaska’s frozen Tanana River at its earliest date. (We know because folks like to bet on it.)

Another record the world appears to be on track for breaking around 2050: A summer when all the Arctic sea ice melts. Scientists think this hasn’t happened in 10,000 years, and even then it isn’t clear that the Arctic Ocean was completely ice-free. Ice has covered the poles for millions of years.

Altogether, it seems like there’s only one kind of record we’re in no danger of breaking anytime soon: the cold ones. The last time the planet saw a record-cold month was 99 years ago.

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Extreme heat? Check. Ice loss? Check. Any other records we can shatter?

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#Prattkeeping Is the Best Thing on the Internet Today

Mother Jones

Jurassic World opened last weekend, breaking all sorts of records. While that’s great and all, and dinosaurs are awesome and what not, this is the best thing that happened as a result: Prattkeeping.

In the movie, Chris Pratt does a move to assert dominance and calm down raptors. Animal keepers started to contribute their own versions, and before long a new wonderful meme was born. Check out Fusion for a longer list.

Here are some of our favorites:

#raptorsquad @cameldiscovery #jurasiczookeeper keeper Ambrose

A photo posted by Kati Speer (@kati_speer) on Jun 17, 2015 at 11:37am PDT

#jurassiczookeeper @sacramentozoo

A photo posted by Mike Owyang (@ohmygoat1) on Jun 14, 2015 at 9:08pm PDT

Jurassic Keeper. #jurassicworld #dinosaur #emu #jurassiczookeeper #animal #movie

A photo posted by Jon Ovens (@parrotman_jon) on Jun 15, 2015 at 11:13pm PDT

Unfortunately, not everyone thinks it’s funny:

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#Prattkeeping Is the Best Thing on the Internet Today

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My Day

Mother Jones

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Heart test. Check. EKG. Check. Chest X-ray. Check. Complete spinal X-ray. Check. 20 vials of blood drawn. Check. All that’s left is a lung test tomorrow and dropping off a stool sample. Then I get a week off before I visit City of Hope for an orientation and further instructions in preparation for the stem cell transplant in April. Progress!

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My Day

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Marco Rubio Has a Peculiar Idea of How to Defeat ISIS

Mother Jones

Steve Benen points me to Marco Rubio today. Here is Rubio explaining how his ISIS strategy would be different from President Obama’s:

“ISIS is a radical Sunni Islamic group. They need to be defeated on the ground by a Sunni military force with air support from the United States,” Rubio said. “Put together a coalition of armed regional governments to confront ISIS on the ground with U.S. special forces support, logistical support, intelligence support and the most devastating air support possible,” he added, “and you will wipe ISIS out.”

Hmmm. As Benen points out, this sounds awfully similar to what Obama is already doing. Local forces? Check. Coalition of regional governments? Check. Logistical support? Check. Air support? Check.

But there is one difference. Rubio thinks we need a Sunni military force on the ground to defeat ISIS. The Iraqi army, of course, is mostly Shiite. So apparently Rubio thinks we should ditch the Iraqi military and put together a coalition of ground forces from neighboring countries. But this would be….who? Yemen is out. Syria is out. That leaves Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey. Does Rubio think these countries are willing to put together a ground force to invade Iraq? Does he think the Iraqi government would allow it?

It is a mystery. What exactly does Marco Rubio think?

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Marco Rubio Has a Peculiar Idea of How to Defeat ISIS

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Live Event: Inquiring Minds Interviews Adam Savage in San Francisco

Mother Jones

In San Francisco? Join neuroscientist and opera singer Indre Viskontas on October 28 for a conversation with Mythbusters’ Adam Savage in a special live production of the Inquiring Minds podcast! We’ll discuss the joy of using science and critical thinking to explore and understand our world. With each show, we endeavor to find out what’s true, what’s left to discover, and why it all matters with weekly coverage of the latest headlines and probing discussions with leading scientists and thinkers.

The event also includes a live production of The Story Collider. Check out the details below, and get your tickets here.

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Live Event: Inquiring Minds Interviews Adam Savage in San Francisco

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