How You Can Help Protect Rivers at Home
1. Use Biodegradable Cleaning Products
At home and on the river, use biodegradable cleaning products and earth-friendly body products to help protect our rivers. All of that and chemicals get washed down the drain and back to the rivers.
2. Wash Your Clothes and Dishes Responsibly
When using your washing machine and dish washer, keep a full load as it uses less water due to the volume the clothes and dishes take up. Turn off auto-dry and open up the dishwasher to let the dishes air dry naturally.
3. Time Your Showers
At 5 gallons per minute, a 10 minute shower uses 50 gallons of water. If you drank 1 gallon of water per day, that’s 50 days’ worth of water down the drain in 10 minutes.
4. Conserve Water When Brushing
Turn off the water when you brush your teeth or fill a cup with water that you’ll use so that perfectly good water isn’t going straight down the drain.
5. Conserve Energy
Turn off lights when not in use and unplug chargers. Energy production requires water to cool thermal power plants and for extraction, transport, and processing in fuel production.
6. Participate in Meatless Mondays
Participating in Meatless Mondays not only does it give you variety and creativity in your meals, it takes about 600 gallons of water to make a hamburger patty due to the amount of water used to grow feed crops and water cattle.
7. Pick up Trash
Pick up trash and litter and toss it in the recycling or garbage cans. Lots of trash is washed down storm sewers and back to the rivers.
For those of you who worry that your small actions won’t make a difference, consider everybody that you share this information with, those who already make an effort, and how all these actions will collectively and positively improve the health of our rivers. Check out this list of 50 Ways to Save Your River for more ideas on how you can help.
Wilderness Aware Rafting is the only Colorado rafting company that is 100% fueled off of wind and solar power. Our fleet of busses are emission friendly and we do our best to educate our customers on the importance of protecting our rivers and outdoor spaces. We’d love to take you out on a Buena Vista rafting adventure! Visit our website for more information about our Browns Canyon rafting trips and more. Thank you for helping to protect our rivers!
