Super Charge Your Shower

A Night of 100 Stars - Oxygenics Makes Big Splash with Oscar Winners New and Old!

Hollywood, CA - ETL, the manufacturer of Oxygenics showerheads, was invited to the 17th Annual Night of 100 Stars Gala at the Beverly Hills Hotel in West Hollywood on February 25, 2007 to share the magic of Oxygenics with the celebrities. Past Oscar winners and this year’s nominees flocked to the event headed for only one place, the gift room. The stars stopped by the Oxygenics booth looking to Super Charge their showers with the latest in technology from the industry leader in power, pressure, and durability. They all wanted to know only one thing: Where can I get one?

Please check out these products for more information and to learn how you can shower like the stars.

Learning about water efficiency can be as easy as 1-2-3 with WaterSense’s recently released Fix a Leak Week curriculum. WaterSense has developed lessons for grades 3 through 5 that focus on saving water through finding leaks.

Nationwide more than 1 trillion gallons of water leak from U.S. homes each year. In fact, the average home can waste 11,000 gallons of water per year, enough to fill a backyard swimming pool. But students can learn about saving water and conduct fun science experiments by sleuthing out leaks where they live and helping parents find ways to fix them.

The free resources offer step-by-step instructions for teachers and include ready-made worksheets for students. Parents and water conservation outreach coordinators may also find these materials and a corresponding family pledge to save water useful.

While the curriculum is designed to be taught during Fix a Leak Week (March 15–21, 2010), the concepts are timeless and worthy of teaching any time of the year. Learn more about Fix a Leak Week 2010 and the teacher’s curriculum.

Believe it or not, water is undervalued in many parts of the country. In fact, about 30 percent of all water utilities operate at a loss or a deficit. So where does all your money go? The money you pay toward your water bill is stretched many different ways by utilities.

Water utilities, like any business, need to pay for operating expenses such as electricity, treatment chemicals, maintenance, and employee wages. On average, about 70 percent of your water bill goes to your water utility’s operating expenses.

As they work to collect sufficient revenue to ensure the availability of clean and safe water, municipalities and water managers try to keep their rates affordable. Even so, the cost of water and wastewater varies, and the factors that ultimately set the price differ from community to community. Many private water utilities serving smaller communities lack commercial and industrial customers that help keep costs to residents low. These utilities are sometimes forced to charge residents nearly double the national average to recoup operating expenses. In these communities, investing in water efficiency makes twice as much sense.

But that only makes up part of your water utility’s financial needs. Many water utilities need money to pay for improvement projects to upgrade infrastructure or increase capacity—meaning the ability to provide water to an expanding number of customers—and they might also need to pay down debt just like the rest of us. In fact, EPA studies estimate that updating aging water and wastewater infrastructure could cost more than $500 billion over the next two decades. While many of the pipes that deliver water to American homes are relatively new, some pipes are more than 80 years old and well overdue for replacement. And this $500 billion does not include the funds that are needed to build new infrastructure to meet the demands of a growing population!

The good news is that there is something both utilities and consumers can do to delay these major investments and save money. WaterSense makes fiscal sense, both from a utility standpoint, and to consumers’ wallets. Many water utilities are promoting WaterSense labeled products to help their customers save on water bills and to delay the utilities’ need for expensive projects to increase capacity.

So if you’re looking for new ways to pinch pennies as a household, consider the following.
The average household can reduce its water bills by as much as 30 percent by installing water-efficient plumbing fixtures such as WaterSense labeled toilets and faucets and ENERGY STAR qualified appliances. Replacing older, inefficient toilets alone could save a family of four some $90 per year. These savings, coupled with potential rebates in your area, mean your bathroom makeover could pay for itself in no time—and pay the savings forward in your community for years to come.