If you want to reduce your water consumption, changing your personal behavior in which of the following ways is most effective in saving water?

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BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The question asks which personal-behavior change is most effective for saving water. Here are the options restated for clarity:
- A: Replace taps, showers, and toilets with more water efficient models.
- B: Replace lawns with drought tolerant landscaping.
- C: Turn off the water when brushing your teeth.
- D: Reduce your consumption and especially, eat less meat.
- E: Take shorter showers and/or shower less frequently.

Option A: Replacing plumbing fixtures with water-efficient models can reduce the water used per use, especially in showers, toilets, and taps. This is a hardware upgrade that lowers the baseline consumption and can yield noticeable savings over time, but it requires upfront costs and may not address how much you actually use water in other activities.

Option B: Swapping traditional lawns for drought-tolerant landscaping reduces outdoor irrigation needs, which can be a major source of household water use in many regions. This is highly effective in hot, dry climates, but its impact depends on climate, yard size, and maintenance; it also involves a landscape choice rather than a strictly daily water-use behavior.

Option C: Turning off the water while brushing teeth saves water by eliminating a continuous flow during that activity. It is a good, simple personal habit that reduces waste, yet the total amount saved per person per day is relatively small compared to other large-scale water-use factors like diet or overall consumption.

Option D: Reducing overall consumption and especially meat consumption targets the most water-intensive parts of daily life. Meat production, particularly beef and lamb, uses substantially more water per calorie or per gram of protein than plant-based foods. Therefore, this behavioral change tends to yield large, system-wide water savings across diet, shopping, and meal planning.

Option E: Taking shorter showers or showering less frequently lowers water use per bathing event and can accumulate sizeable savings, especially in households with long average shower times. However, the total impact is typically less than substantial dietary changes or large outdoor water-use reductions in drought-prone settings.

To compare these, it helps to think about baseline water use: while fixture upgrades (A) and reduced brushing (C) or shorter showers (E) cut water per use, and landscaping changes (B) cuts outdoor usage, changing what you eat (D) often reduces water use across multiple stages of production and consumption, producing larger overall savings on average. Thus, D is the most impactful single behavioral change among the options when aiming for maximum water savings.

ENVIR 100 (Sp25) Exam 3

If you want to reduce your water consumption, changing your personal behavior in which of the following ways is most effective in saving water?

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