Instead of letting the water run in the sink when you want a cool drink, keep a jug or pitcher full cooling in the refrigerator. If you detect and dislike the taste of chlorine in your water, which is used by many communities for disinfection, an uncovered jug or pitcher will allow chlorine molecules to escape into the air, thus improving the taste. If U.S. citizens averaged only four or five flushes per day, it would amount to more than 5 billion gallons of water down the drain. That's enough to supply drinking water to the entire population of Chicago for more than 6 years. If everyone in the United States flushed the toilet just one less time per day, we could save a lake full of water about a mile long, a mile wide, and four feet deep every day.
Little leaks add up in a hurry.
An invisible toilet leak that totals only two tablespoons a minute comes to 15 gallons a day. That's 105 gallons a week, and 5,460 wasted gallons of water a year. You can test it by putting 10 drops of food coloring to the water tank. Don't flush for 15 minutes. If the colored water shows up in the bowl, the tank is leaking.