Green Invest

Now and into the future, plumbers will be considered champions of the environment thanks to a new school of thought called Green Plumbing.

Green Plumbers started in Australia about seven years ago. After a 10-year drought, the Australian government knew something drastic needed to change in order for the country to have enough water. One of the ideas was training the plumbers in conservation. Steve Lehtonen heard about Green Plumbers and brought it here to the United States about a year ago.

"(The) master plumbers group in Australia said, 'We need to be green.' They were amazingly successful (with) savings of 50 percent for some of the states in Australia," said Lehtonen, who is now the director of Green Plumbers USA. "Our goal is to retrain 15,000 plumbers in California and 40,000 plumbers across the country over the next four years."

Lehtonen says in California, 19 percent of the total energy is used in the transportation of water. If we use less water, then we not only save water, we save energy.

Green Plumbers teaches plumbers how to train homeowners to save water, energy and money.

For example, showers built 30 to 40 years ago use about 10 gallons of water per minute. A 10-minute shower eats up 100 gallons of water, for one person. The law today allows new showers to use 2.5 gallons per minute. There are also water-saving toilets and water-heating systems. When you turn on hot water at home, it can take one to two minutes to heat up. During that time, one or two gallons of water is wasted. New hot water systems can save up to 20,000 gallons of water a year.

Water-saving technology can save bigger buildings and businesses about 100,000 gallons of water a year.