Water Sustainability Practices

Welcome to Durango, our mountain paradise. We hope you have a relaxing and luxurious stay. We take water conservation seriously here and appreciate your help taking care of our water supply. Visitors can sometimes unknowingly contribute to local water wastage. Leisure activities like swimming pools and golf courses can lead to excessive water consumption. Taking daily baths or long showers, or daily laundering of linens and towels can put a strain on our local water supply. Here are a few ideas to keep in mind for helping our community practice sustainable water practices.

Easy and Short Term Solutions

We know that the last thing you want to think about on vacation is conserving resources. It’s a time for rest, renewal, and relaxation. But here are a few simple and effective ways to get the most out of your trip, while keeping your water overuse to a minimum.

Take showers instead of baths.
Take shorter showers.
Avoid letting the tap run unnecessarily, such as when you’re brushing teeth, washing hands, or doing the dishes.
Reuse towels and sheets until they actually need to be washed.
Cut back on handwashing and bring hand sanitizer to keep your hands clean.
Re-wear your clothes until they’re actually dirty to cut back on laundry.
Bring your own reusable water bottle. You’ll be saving water that would go toward making single-use water bottles and keeping the single use water bottles out of our landfill. This is a great double-duty sustainability solution!
Eat less meat. This tip might seem unrelated to water consumption, but it’s not. A typical meat eater’s diet can use double the amount of water than that of a vegetarian, or vegan.

Future and Longer-Term Solutions

Here are a few ideas to keep your water usage reasonable both at your accommodations and at home while you’re away.

Do your homework on the front end of your trip and secure a sustainable water savvy place to stay. Plenty of hotels here are taking steps to make their accommodations more water efficient. Or if you are staying at a rental home, check to see if they have water-saving appliances or low-flow toilets and showerheads.
Check for leaks in your room and notify the accommodations’ staff if you find any leaks.
Check your home for leaks before you leave to ensure that you don’t come home to a hefty water bill!

Summarizing

There is always a certain amount of responsibility that we as travelers should take to help protect the places we visit. Thank you for doing your part. Every action you take can make a difference, and adds up over time. So we truly appreciate you taking the time to consider your decisions during your time here. Thank you for taking care of our mountain paradise so that we can host you, and many other visitors, long in the future!