Save Water and Money by Replacing Your Shower Head with a WaterSense Model

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One simple and fairly inexpensive home improvement can reduce your household water use by thousands of gallons per year. All you have to do is replace one older, inefficient shower head with a new WaterSense-labeled model.

Showering accounts for nearly 17 percent of residential indoor water use, or about 30 gallons per household per day. Photo credit:

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All products bearing the WaterSense label—including water–efficient showerheads—must be independently certified to ensure they meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) water efficiency and performance criteria. To earn the WaterSense label, the shower head must use no more than 2.0 gallons per minute and provide a satisfactory shower equal to or better than conventional shower heads on the market.

Standard showerheads use 2.5 gallons of water per minute, making showering one of the leading ways we use water in the home. 

The EPA says you can save four gallons of water every time you shower with a WaterSense-labeled shower head. And because energy is required to heat the water coming to your shower, the average family also can save enough electricity to power a home for 13 days each year and cut utility bills by nearly $70 annually.

Changes made at home would add up quickly across the country, the EPA says. If every home in the U.S. replaced existing showerheads with WaterSense-labeled models, more than 260 billion gallons of water and nearly $5.1 billion in water and energy costs would be saved annually.

WaterSense-labeled showerheads are available in all kinds of styles and price points.

Some utilities offer rebates, giveaways, promotions or other incentives to promote water-efficient shower heads. The WaterSense Rebate Finder lists some of the rebates that utilities offer on WaterSense-labeled shower heads and other plumbing fixtures.

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