It's not too late to chance your wasteful ways with water

It's a piece of water-based folklore to rival St Swithin's 40-day hypothesis, but when a hosepipe ban is enforced it usually starts raining. Unfortunately even a good soaking won't fill up these parched aquifers. We've had the driest January to June for 71 years. A crowded island, the wrong type of rainfall (frequent deluges) on the wrong type of surface (increasingly concreted) and a Victorian system all conspire to give us less available water per person than Israel.

Cue the opening of a new desalination plant on the Thames Gateway. But thanks to its gargantuan energy consumption, that's no silver bullet either. Instead we urgently need to get some respect for water. Compare the 30% of Londoners using water meters with 98% in New York.

Taking the pressure off the nation's taps begins with the easy reversal of wasteful habits – leaving the tap running while you brush your teeth costs six litres of water a minute, flushing the loo with a full cistern expends nine litres and washing a car with a hose clocks up 400 litres. It's not just the waste – it's the energy and the capacity it uses up, too. As it swirls down the drain, remember it will need to be pumped to a treatment centre and treated to potable quality.

Opportunities for water conservation are everywhere. If you have a garden shed, install guttering to direct the run-off water into a water butt. As the rivers and reservoirs shrink, there is less about to dilute poisonous spills and chemical leaks that are ordinarily washed away. And falling oxygen levels lead to dead fish. That's far uglier than a yellowing lawn.

If you have any ethical questions, email